Malta Victory

by Robert Jackson

  Yeoman saw that the lieutenant had seized a girl around the waist and was endeavouring to land a kiss on her cheek. Laughing, she was pushing him away. Yeoman looked away, then looked back with sudden interest, for the girl was beautiful — more beautiful than he had imagined at first glance.

  ‘I’m for a basinful of that,’ Powell murmured in his ear.

  ‘Join the queue, you randy sod,’ Yeoman told him. ‘She’s obviously too refined for the likes of you.’

  The girl was petite, with grey eyes and blonde hair, but short. Her white dress clung to her shapely figure; the dress was sleeveless, revealing beautifully moulded arms.

  She turned suddenly from the lieutenant and stared directly at Yeoman, who blushed despite himself, conscious that he had been undressing her mentally. She smiled and her face lit up, her eyes dancing. She said something to the lieutenant, who was whispering things in her ear. Rather reluctantly, he broke off and led her over to where the two RAF officers were standing.

  ‘I say, chaps, sorry and all that, but I don’t know your names,’ he said uncomfortably.

  Yeoman smiled, still blushing, and managed a small bow. He extended his hand to the girl.

  ‘George Yeoman,’ he said. ‘And this is Flying Officer Gerry Powell.’

  Her hand was cool and soft. A kind of electric shock spread up his arm. He was suddenly stone cold sober, and his tiredness and earlier despondency fell away as though someone had waved a magic wand.

  ‘My name is Lucia Manduca,’ she said softly. ‘I am so pleased you could come.’ She addressed the naval lieutenant. ‘Peter, would you be kind enough to get your friends a drink?’

  ‘Why yes, of course,’ the lieutenant stammered. ‘Whisky all right?’

  ‘All right by me,’ Yeoman said. ‘Me, too,’ Powell added. ‘Thanks.’

  Lucia turned back to face Yeoman. She reached out and touched him lightly on the arm.

  ‘I hope you will enjoy yourselves,’ she said. ‘Please make yourselves completely at home. Now, if you will excuse me, I must attend to the rest of my guests. I will look forward to seeing you later.’

  She smiled again, that utterly charming smile, and turned away, disappearing into the throng in a flurry of white, leaving a trace of perfume behind. In a kind of daze, Yeoman watched her go.

  A glass was being pushed into his hand. Startled, he looked round to find the Army major grinning at him.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘I see that little Lucia has snared you in her tender web, too.’

  ‘She’s certainly fascinating,’ Yeoman admitted. ‘I’m puzzled, though. Is she Maltese? She speaks better English than I do.’

  ‘As Maltese as they come,’ the major assured him. ‘She comes from a very old family — pretty high up among the nobility in the old days, apparently. She was educated in England, of course.’

  ‘And she lives here all by herself?’ Yeoman wanted to know.

  The major grinned and wagged a finger. ‘Ah, now you’re fishing, my boy. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t. She has two sisters, both of whom are nurses, but they’re on duty tonight. And there’s her old man, of course, the baron.’

  ‘Baron?’ Yeoman said incredulously. ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ the major protested. ‘He’s a baron all right, although you wouldn’t think it. He’s a hell of a nice chap, very quiet and unassuming. He’s on Gozo at the moment, has a villa there. Quite a distinguished war record in the last lot, I do believe. He’s also a volunteer with the Royal Malta Artillery.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Yeoman exclaimed. He thanked the major for the information, then moved off in search of Powell. The Canadian had knocked back three glasses of whisky so far and was engaged in a heated discussion with two Army types.

  Yeoman left them to it and looked around for Lucia. She was seated on a triangular divan in one corner of the room, talking with an elderly, heavily bejewelled woman. Yeoman edged his way towards her, trying to appear nonchalant. She saw him coming out of the corner of her eye and looked up, smiling that terrific smile and beckoning to him.

  He stood before her, feeling ridiculously self-conscious, as Lucia introduced him to the bejewelled lady, who inclined her head graciously as Yeoman took her hand. Privately, he was racking his brains in search of some way of getting Lucia alone for a few minutes. No one else in the room seemed to matter.

  Lucia seemed to sense his discomfort. She shifted her place a little, then patted the divan to indicate that she wished the pilot to sit beside her. Yeoman did so, casting a sidelong glance at the elderly lady, who gave him a little smile and, so Yeoman swore later, what was almost a wink before turning away to speak to a young civilian who was standing nearby.

  Yeoman cleared his throat and looked at Lucia, his stomach fluttering. Completely at a loss for any other comment, he said:

  ‘I hear your father is a baron.’

  Lucia’s smile widened. She was obviously used to that particular opening remark. ‘You hear correctly, Mr. Yeoman,’ she told him. ‘Are you familiar with our order of nobility?’

  ‘Please call me George,’ Yeoman said. ‘No, I’m not, really. I suppose it has something to do with the Templars?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not at all. The Templars were never in Malta; that is a very popular misconception. The Knights of Malta were — and are — the Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and the Maltese order of nobility existed for centuries before they came here. My father’s family is descended from a knight, Simon de Molay, who helped Count Roger of Normandy drive the Moors from these islands in 1090. My mother came from an even older family, which was purely Maltese in origin; she was a Melac, and her ancestors were here long before even the Romans.’

  Yeoman, vastly interested by all things historical, asked:

  ‘Malta had a lot to do with Carthage then, hadn’t it?’

  Lucia nodded. ‘Yes, Malta was a colony of the Phoenicians — who, of course, founded Carthage — for over a thousand years, and the language of Malta is Punic in origin, not a mixture of African and Sicilian. My mother’s family name, Melac, had its origin in the Carthaginian cult of Moloch. It is probably one of the oldest surviving names in the world.’

  She flashed her brilliant smile again. ‘Did you know that there is considerable evidence that the tomb of the famous Hannibal lies somewhere on the edge of Hal Far airfield?’ she asked.

  Yeoman was forced to admit that he did not.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘my father was trying to raise funds for an archeological dig when war broke out. He’s a very keen amateur, you know, although a somewhat impecunious one. There are two classes of nobility in Malta, the rich and the poor, and I’m afraid Daddy belongs to the latter. Anyway, he devotes most of his time to the Royal Malta Artillery now, and he seems to be very happy.’

  ‘The RMA seems to be a very fine unit,’ Yeoman commented. Lucia’s eyes flashed with sudden pride.

  ‘It is the only Maltese regular unit of the British Army,’ she said. ‘It was raised from the Cacciatori, the Irregulars, those of our people who rose against the French garrison of Napoleon and compelled it to surrender in 1800. In those days, there were —’

  She stopped suddenly, halfway through the sentence. Conversation was stilled throughout the room as though a knife had sliced through it. The guests froze, listening, the flickering candle-flames throwing their shadows like grotesque statues on the delicate eggshell-blue colouring of the walls.

  Far off, a siren had begun its unearthly wailing. It was taken up by others, the sound coming closer and closer until it made the night hideous.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Lucia said softly. Beside her, the elderly lady, swaying gently in her seat, her eyes closed, began to pray.

  ‘Sliema Ghalik Marija ... Missierna Li Inti Fis-Mew-wiet ...’

  The major’s voice sounded, breaking the tableau.

  ‘All right, everybody, down to the cellar. Bring the candles with you. Last people out of the ro
om, put out any candles that are left. Quickly, now! Let’s hope the raid’s a short one.’

  Lucia suddenly placed her hand on Yeoman’s arm. With a shock, he realized that she was trembling.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, her voice small and frightened. ‘I don’t want to go down there, Not again. I can’t stand being ... below ground.’ She was avoiding the words ‘buried’ or ‘entombed’. ‘Will you come up to the roof with me, out in the open?’

  ‘It’ll be dangerous,’ Yeoman told her doubtfully. ‘A lot of shrapnel comes down from the anti-aircraft barrage, and ...’

  ‘Please!’ she said desperately, her eyes wide and marbled. His heart went out to her.

  ‘All right,’ he said gently, ‘whatever you say.’

  Gerry Powell appeared beside them. Come on, you two,’ he said urgently. ‘Let’s get below decks.’

  Yeoman shook his head. ‘No, I’m going out on the roof with Lucia. We want to see what’s going on.’

  ‘Well,’ said Powell, ‘on your own heads be it. I’m off to play at being a rabbit. But watch yourselves, huh?’

  He followed the other guests through the main door. Lucia took one of the candelabra and led Yeoman along a short corridor to the foot of a steep, winding staircase. They hurried up it, their footfalls sounding hollow and unreal, until they came to a small landing. There were doors on either side, presumably leading to attics, and one directly in front. Lucia extinguished the candles and opened it. They stepped out into warm night air.

  ‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘Mind you don’t trip. You had better take my hand.’

  Yeoman lost no time in obeying. Together, they walked across the flat roof and stood by the railing that surrounded it.

  The sirens had ceased their wailing and the night was completely still. The couple looked out over the darkened island, with its canopy of stars and the shimmering sea beneath. Not a glimmer of light was to be seen, not even a searchlight. There was no sound apart from a gentle sighing, coming from the sea.

  ‘It’s too quiet,’ Yeoman said, his voice low. ‘Unreal, almost.’

  ‘Perhaps it was just a false alarm,’ Lucia murmured hopefully.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Yeoman told her. ‘They’ll have picked up something definite on radar, and —’

  He broke off as Lucia gripped his arm. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I can hear them. They’re coming.’

  She was right. Far off in the darkness they could hear the steady drone of aero-engines, growing louder with every second. Yeoman turned his head from side to side, trying to locate the source of the sound, and a moment later his brow furrowed in perplexity. The swelling noise seemed to be coming from the south-east, the opposite direction to Sicily. Moreover, it bore little resemblance to the throbbing, desynchronized note of the Junkers 88.

  Suddenly, he knew it for what it was. In a surge of excitement, he put his arm around Lucia’s shoulders and hugged her to him.

  ‘They’re ours,’ he cried. ‘The bombers are coming back — flying in from Egypt! It’s all right, they’re ours!’

  Then another thought struck him. Why had the sirens sounded? Unless ... unless the enemy knew about the incoming bombers and was sending in a raid to try and hit them as they landed.

  He did not voice his thoughts to Lucia. Instead, he concentrated on the sound of the incoming aircraft, trying to work out how far away they were, praying that they all got down safely. The leading bombers, judging by their engine noise, were crossing the coast now, somewhere over towards Marsaxlokk. They seemed to be heading for Luqa. Yeoman tried to identify the signature of their engines: they didn’t sound like Wellingtons. Probably Beaufort torpedo-bombers, he thought.

  The note of the engines changed as the leading aircraft began its approach to Luqa, dying away to a dull rumble. Yeoman tried to count the bombers as they went in, his ears tuning to the sound of each one. He thought he counted six. They were all down. They had all made it.

  Then the flashes burst across the skyline, throwing everything into stark relief for a second. The night closed in again, but not for long. In the direction of Luqa a dull red glow suffused the sky, and in that same instant they heard the crump of the explosions. They also heard the strident howl of more aero-engines, this time unmistakably German, accompanied by the bark of cannon fire. Another fire flared, died briefly away and then flared more brightly close to the first, twin beacons in the darkness.

  Belatedly the flak opened up, scattering pearls of light across the sky over Luqa. Searchlights flicked on, their beams wavering uselessly across the sky, but the attackers had already gone.

  ‘Someone’s bought it,’ Yeoman said dully, staring at the red glow. ‘The Huns must have come in low, from the west, and jumped Dingli Cliffs. Sounded like Messerschmitt 110s.’

  Beside him, Lucia shivered. His arm was still round her shoulders. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked.

  ‘No. It’s just that ... I was thinking about those poor men in the bombers. Coming all this way, to help us, and then ...’

  He knew that she was weeping quietly, her tears hidden by the darkness, and held her closer to him.

  ‘They didn’t get them all,’ he said lamely. ‘Some of them got down all right.’

  It was not over yet. Engines, many of them, drummed in the northern sky. The horizon twinkled with flashes as flak batteries opened up near Mellieha, the sound reaching Yeoman and Lucia seconds later, even before the shells exploded. The bombers were coming high, out of range of most of the anti-aircraft fire. They were probably Italian, although it was impossible to say with certainty.

  The whole island seemed to shudder as the first sticks of bombs exploded somewhere near Takali. More bombs fell, creeping towards and across Luqa and Safi. It was as though the bombers were trying to break the spine of the island. The explosions formed a continuous drum-roll of noise, battering the senses.

  ‘They’re going for the airfields again,’ Yeoman said. ‘I think we’re going to be all right, this time.’

  The bombers were turning out to sea as soon as they released their loads, diving to pick up speed and endeavouring to keep clear of the mighty flak barrage around the Grand Harbour. Yeoman wondered why the Beaufighters had not taken off.

  Not all the bombers succeeded in avoiding the barrage. Yeoman heard engines directly overhead, and a few moments later the night around their little rooftop island dissolved in noise and lightning flashes as dozens of batteries opened up, spraying the sky with multi-coloured shell-bursts. Beneath their feet, the building trembled and vibrated violently.

  There was a sudden rustling noise, a soughing of air nearby. Something struck the courtyard below with a clang. Instinctively, Yeoman moved closer to Lucia.

  ‘That was shrapnel,’ he said urgently. ‘I suggest we move to a less exposed spot — the doorway, perhaps. We can watch from there, if you like.’

  He led her, unprotesting, across the rooftop. In the open doorway they turned, standing close to one another, looking back at the savage firework display. The din was terrific, and Lucia pressed her hands to her ears. Yeoman pointed, mouthing words which she could not hear: high over Valletta the tiny moth-shape of a bomber was caught in a cone of searchlights, the sparks of the anti-aircraft shells dancing around it. It twisted and turned, spiralling down in its pool of vivid light, the glowing strings of shells creeping closer to it all the while.

  Then suddenly it was gone, dissolving into a thousand incandescent embers that cascaded down through the night. Yeoman and Lucia watched them as they fell and were extinguished one by one. Only one large fragment still burned as it tumbled to earth, somewhere beyond Birkirkara.

  Neither Yeoman nor Lucia said anything. There was nothing to say; what they had witnessed was remote and impersonal. Yeoman recalled, suddenly, how he had stood on the balcony outside the billet in Naxxar on his first night in Malta and witnessed the destruction of an enemy bomber, dwelling later in the silence of his room on the fate of its crew. Tonight, he felt no such senti
ment, and did not know whether to be glad or sorry because of it.

  The searchlights that had trapped the destroyed aircraft like a moth in a jar were now searching for other targets, but the bombers were departing, the sound of their engines fading away to the north-west. All except one.

  Yeoman hurriedly pulled Lucia deeper into the shelter of the doorway as a faint whistling noise grew to a piercing shriek. The stick of bombs fluted overhead and the couple ducked as it exploded a few streets away with a massive crump that left their ears singing. In the wake of the explosions they heard the rumble of failing, sliding masonry.

  ‘Probably a hung-up bomb load,’ Yeoman said breathlessly. ‘It’s over now. They’ve gone.’

  A few moments later the all-clear sounded. Lucia turned to Yeoman, looking up at him. Without warning, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on his cheek.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘Thank you for taking care of me.’

  Somewhat at a loss for words, Yeoman said: ‘Well, we’d better go back inside. The others will be coming up from the shelter. They’ll be wondering what happened to us.’

  Yet neither of them made a move. Yeoman’s brain was whirling, flashing with memories of another occasion, an age ago, when he had stood at a window in London and watched German bombs falling on the docks. Julia had been beside him, then.

  But Julia was not here now, and Lucia was. Taking a deep breath, he blurted:

  ‘Lucia — just before we go down, I’d like to ask you ... I mean, may I come to see you again?’

  She smiled, and squeezed his hand gently.

  ‘I should like that,’ she whispered. ‘I should like that very much.’

  Chapter Eight

  The Luqa squadron was on dawn readiness, the Spitfires standing combat-ready in their blast pens, their pilots nearby. Yeoman leaned against the sandbags, idly watching the sunrise without really seeing it, turning over in his mind the words of the Air Officer Commanding Malta.