by David Black
The architecture was grand and Italianate: Renaissance, rococo, gothic. Avenues and strada lined with high tenements, all in that dazzling Malta limestone, with their wrought-iron balconies and stone verandas, decked with little striped awnings – still trying to look pretty despite the bomb scars. The history, yes, but the wealth of the place, he’d been unprepared for. And as he walked along the crowded pavements, girls in bright dresses and cardigans, some stepping out with a sailor or an airman, he imagined himself hand in hand with Shirley Lamont, sharing it all with her, remembering how she loved all the fine things – anything, really, that had to do with the creation of beauty.
And then he stopped himself. Maudlin, Harry, he said to himself, too easy to fall off that cliff, and then he thought about the letter she’d written him, the one that had been waiting for him back in Blighty, when he’d reported to HMS Dolphin, the Trade’s old Fort Blockhouse home in Gosport, after he’d been transferred off Radegonde, and that had stayed unopened since. It had travelled a long way, that letter: with him on the Sunderland that had flown him to Gib, then on to HM Submarine P413, which was to carry him to Malta and his new posting. And it had remained on P413 when he was forced to get off, only to be offloaded by Commander Clasp along with all his other kit at the Tenth’s Lazaretto base in the hope that one day he might eventually turn up. It was there still, lying in his little stone cabin. He was fed up thinking about it, tired of wondering what it might say, and sick at the thought.
Looking for a distraction, he ducked into a small bookshop, a dusty warren of a place, down two steps and hidden behind caked windows, taped against blast, that hadn’t seen a chamois since the days of Jean de Valette. He was barely through the door before Harry knew its shelves contained a veritable treasure trove of leather and even canvas-bound volumes, some practically ancient. Right at the back was an old, round, bald man in a hardware storeman’s brown overall coat, sat back on a rickety rocking chair, smoking, with a chipped but elegant cup of piping hot coffee before him, reading the Times of Malta.
He looked up and grinned. ‘A young British sailor boy,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you before. How may I assist?’
‘I’m looking for a first edition of Homer’s The Iliad, and I thought yours looked like a place I might find one,’ said Harry. And at that the old man laughed so much he almost fell off his chair.
Chapter Nine
Harry walked into the wardroom gallery at the Lazaretto, and dumped the hessian sack full of books he’d bought by one of the sofas. A cool afternoon breeze was blowing off the water through its open-pillared frontage. Below, on the pontoons, he could see Umbrage, some of her crew still fussing about her. Grainger was on her bridge, talking to a man in a gold-braided officer’s cap and oil-slathered overalls. Probably Commander Sam MacGregor, the base engineering officer. Harry hadn’t met him yet.
Rais had simply walked off the boat after they had come alongside. Off to report to Shrimp, though he hadn’t said so. Grainger had watched him go, then sent Harry and Wykham ashore, telling them he’d get Umbrage squared away. Not that she needed much doing, just a good clean-out and replenishment.
Harry flopped on to the sofa, and as he watched the Maltese steward come striding down the gallery towards him, a terrible glum weight descended. He should have been in a good mood after his boozy lunch with Peter Dumaresq, and his fascinating chat with the old bookseller and the reassuring trove of books he’d bought, but he wasn’t.
‘A fifty-gallon oil drum full of pink gin, please, John,’ he said. The effects of Dumaresq’s hospitality were wearing off, but Harry didn’t feel like getting sober again so soon. The steward bowed a little and smiled his customary benign smile; he was used to his young men.
In front of Harry, the harbour water danced in the sun like a scene from a cinema travelogue. At this angle you couldn’t see the skein of oil, or make out the rubbish floating in it. Suddenly Harry had never felt so far from home, or far from the boy he used to be. He began scratching at his sandfly bites. The whole base was infested with them, and he’d begun his collection of angry little red blotches the very first night he’d arrived. One more burden on the load.
It felt as though the whole weight of the war was on him. Harry didn’t know whether it was the beautiful day that had made the island’s scars seem so upsetting, or whether it was seeing Dumaresq that had made him realise how lonely and friendless he felt aboard his new boat. He was usually so good at putting all that stuff in a box, the way he did with fear and with the unavoidable truth of the number of boats and crew they were losing. No point in dwelling on it – nothing you could do.
It even made him remember how happy he had been to see Grainger, of all bloody people, sitting here, the night he’d finally managed to arrive from Gib. And to learn that Grainger, of all people, was going to be his new Number One, aboard his new submarine, Umbrage. What a false dawn that had been.
Oh yes, he remembered that night well. The Sunderland that had flown him in from Gib had touched down at the seaplane base at Kalafrana just before dusk, and one of the few RAF three-hundredweight trucks still running – most were up on bricks in a bid to conserve fuel – had dropped him at the Lazaretto’s door. He’d lugged his kit up the stairs, and there was Grainger. The friend from Trebuchet days that he hadn’t seen since they’d managed to coax their battered boat all the way back from Norway’s North Cape. Just.
He called Grainger his friend for want of a better description. Grainger, the man who had come back for Harry, after he’d been left lying wounded in the dark, on an enemy deck while a Gun Action with enemy transports raged all around them. Harry, already dead, according to the other sailors from his boarding party. But Grainger hadn’t believed them: he had turned their dinghy around and gone to look for his missing man, even though he risked being left behind himself. Apart from that selfless deed, Grainger had always remained a remote figure to him. But then, he’d remained a remote figure to everyone.
And now here was Harry arriving in this strange, new and dangerous posting, and there, waiting for him, completely unexpected, had been Grainger. Harry remembered the grin that had split his face, right up until Grainger had begun telling him his news, that their Gunnery Officer on Trebuchet, the Tigger, also wounded in that action, had eventually died of his wounds. Harry couldn’t work out how that could be, after the lad had survived so long. But dead he was. And then there was their Skipper, the irrepressible Andy Trumble.
‘After the Bucket, they gave him one of the new S-boats,’ Grainger had said. ‘Overdue, presumed lost last month. The word is a mine got them, somewhere in the Skagerrak. No survivors. The Bucket’s gone too. Constructive total loss. The dockyard people were amazed she managed to get us back as far as Shetland, apparently. Chopped up for razor blades now, I imagine.’
And that had been before Harry went to report to the base Staff Officer, Operations, known affectionately, or perhaps not, as the SOO – only to learn that HMS Nimuae, the N-class sub he was supposed to join, was overdue, presumed lost too, and that he had instead been appointed Navigator on Umbrage.
If Harry had arrived on Malta when he was supposed to, instead of ending up in that holiday camp on Majorca, he’d have been on her, and dead now.
Everybody knew the losses had been terrible. Even the newspapers back home had to admit it. But somehow it seemed different when it was people you knew who were filling the lists. Who’d been the first to get it? Sells, of course, his friend from his class at King Alfred, blown up by a mine off Mersea Island, wasn’t it? He couldn’t even remember his face now. Then there’d been Sandeman and McVeigh and all the others who didn’t make it out of Pelorus. And now the Tigger and Andy Trumble. He was going to die in this war. Why not? Everyone else seemed to be.
John, the steward, was at his side suddenly, handing him a glass of pink gin. ‘No clean fifty-gallon drums, Sir,’ he said, same smile. ‘Can I bring your order in instalments?’
Harry shook himself, and manag
ed a smile back. ‘Of course, John. Thank you. But no siphoning off the odd thimbleful, thinking I won’t notice,’ he said. Laughter.
There had been one bit of good news. Malcolm Carey was also here. Trebuchet’s Australian First Lieutenant was in command of another of the Tenth’s N-class boats, HMS Nicobar. He’d been on patrol when Harry had arrived on Malta, and while Harry had been on patrol, he’d come in and gone out again.
Seeing Malcolm Carey again was at least something to look forward to, assuming he didn’t end up overdue, etc., etc., too. Harry took a gulp of his drink and began fishing the books out of his sack, smiling again at last, at the thought of Malcolm Carey: Malcolm and the photograph of his wife Fenella. That Malcolm Carey had been married was exotic enough for Harry, when he’d met him for the first time. Harry had never had a friend who was married. And certainly never one who’d come all the way from Melbourne, with a wife called Fenella left behind. Nor was Carey the usual Aussie. He might have been the typical tall, loosed-limbed, fair-haired picture of rude health, but there was nothing Ocker about him. In fact, when Harry, the young Sub, fresh from his student union had first met Malcolm Carey, he had seemed to embody every notion of sophistication possible. And that was before he had seen the photograph. He still couldn’t get it out of his head. ‘This is my wife, Fenella,’ Carey had said, handing him the little portrait. And what had he seen? A siren looking out at him from a blustery day by St Kilda Beach. That image had lodged itself ever since – Fenella’s mane of fair hair, and the way the wind was pressing the flimsiness of her dress to the curve of her flanks. Being a typical twenty-one-year-old, remembering that photograph cheered him up immensely.
He took a breath, and began ferreting in the bottom of the sack again for his pencil and notebook. Another belt of gin and he began to leaf through the first volume. Working through these books would give him an excuse not to go back to his little cabin, and sit and look at his unopened letter from Shirley.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
The voice came from over Harry’s left shoulder. The first thing Harry saw when he spun around on the sofa were four gold braid rings on a sleeve. The sight made Harry start to get up, but a firm hand on his shoulder held him in place.
‘There’s no need to be leaping about in the wardroom. Sit where you are,’ said the voice: one of those growls that doesn’t need volume to issue commands. Harry looked up, and there was the square, creased face of his Captain (S), Shrimp Simpson.
It was usually tradition in the Andrew that Captains couldn’t wander into the wardroom willy-nilly, disturbing the harmony. They had to be invited by the mess president. But this one, Harry had noticed on that first night he’d arrived from Gib, seemed to come and go whenever he felt like it. It was very disconcerting.
‘Sir,’ was all Harry deemed prudent to respond, as he let his eyes do a discreet check down the length of the gallery. There wasn’t another soul in sight to rescue him. Simpson picked up one of the books. ‘They’re in Italian,’ he said.
‘Yes, Sir,’ said Harry. But when Simpson continued to look down at him, he thought it better to offer further explanation. ‘I was studying Italian, Sir . . . when war broke out . . .’
‘You speak Italian?’ asked Simpson, now mildly more interested, the growl moderating to a grumble.
‘Not brilliantly, Sir. A bit. But, the Scottish education system, Sir . . . might not be able to speaka da lingo like a native, but by God, I know the grammar.’
‘. . . And what? You’re keeping your hand in?’
‘No, Sir. Translating.’
Simpson was a short, stocky man, with unruly sandy hair already going salt ’n’ pepper not surprising given his immense age – pushing forty, some said. Harry had been warned about his reputation for not suffering fools. So Harry, who could be sensitive to those things when he felt like it, got the message when Simpson’s shoulders seemed to sag, as if he were saying, am I going to have to interrogate you?
‘Sorry, Sir. I found them in an old bookshop on Kingsway,’ said Harry, deciding to start explaining himself. And when Simpson then began nodding, Harry knew he was on safe ground again. He continued, ‘It was something that happened on patrol . . .’
‘Oh yes,’ said Simpson, now definitely interested.
‘We missed with a torpedo,’ said Harry, but determined not to say more. Knowing when to be loyal to his boat, he only added, ‘It was because of currents. And when I saw these, I had an idea.’ And Harry held up one of the books. The title page showed a map of Italy imposed on a compass rose, with a Latin title, Mare Nostrum, and the author’s name, or more likely a pseudonym, printed as a handwritten signature: Capitano Massimo. And beneath that, a subheading: Una guida per la navigazione costiera.
‘They’re for yachtsmen. They give descriptions of currents, coastal shoals, points like church towers to aid navigation. A trove, Sir. I thought if I could translate some of them . . . It’s a series . . . It covers from the Ligurian Sea all the way around to the head of the Adriatic . . . Every port approach, lighthouse . . . everything. First one came out in 1919, but the last one in 1937! It could be very helpful intelligence, for inshore work. Do you think?’
Simpson took the book from Harry’s hand and began flicking through. ‘Line maps . . . and photographs . . . hmmmm.’ He handed the book back. ‘You’re Gilmour, aren’t you?’
Harry nodded.
‘Yeeees . . . You were posted to Nimuae, but got lost in transit.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Lucky for you,’ said Simpson, turning away. Then over his shoulder, ‘Carry on, Mr Gilmour; we’ll speak about this later. Meanwhile, don’t mention your books to anyone else yet, please.’
‘Sir!’ said Harry. ‘One more thing, Sir. I’ve left a note in the mess president’s docket, but just to let you know . . . Pelleas’s commanding officer, Captain Dumaresq . . . I’ve invited him over for a wardroom dinner . . .’
‘When?’ interrupted Simpson.
‘Tomorrow night, Sir.’
‘He won’t be able to make it,’ said Simpson.
‘Sir?’ said Harry, looking utterly crestfallen.
Simpson sighed, and gave him a little consolation twinkle. ‘Not your fault, Gilmour. I’ve just come from Lascaris . . .’, then, seeing Harry’s further confusion, ‘. . . Lascaris, the joint Ops Room. Captain Dumaresq is going to be otherwise engaged tomorrow night. Trust me.’ And with that, he was gone, striding down the gallery.
Harry and Wykham went out that night with the Tenth’s SOO, an RN Lieutenant called Hume – a spivvy-looking character with a knowing look, and, from the shine, what looked like some kind of mechanical lubricant sealing down his centre parting. There was no one else around. Harry had no idea where Rais had gone, and he’d last seen Grainger’s back disappearing out of the front gates, heading off Manoel Island and into Sliema. He seemed to like his own company, or at least that was the impression Harry had got. Grainger certainly didn’t seem to associate much with the other Jimmys. Not that there were any other Jimmys about tonight.
The other boat in – that P number – was over in the dry dock, having her pipework welded back together again, and her cable runs rerun. She’d apparently been on the wrong end of a bad shaking at the hands of some Italian escorts, and most of her crew had been packed off to the submarine rest camp in the north of the island at Ghajn Tuffieha Bay, to get over it. Six of them, however, had required more than beer and sunbathing and were in the big naval hospital on the point at Bighi, overlooking the Grand Harbour.
Hume, Harry and Wykham took a dghaisa over to Valletta, where Hume had announced he would be their guide to the fleshpots. He then led them up the steps on to the Strada Reale. ‘We’ll try the Union Club first,’ Hume said. ‘Don’t want to plunge you young virgins into the depths of unspeakable sordidness that are some of The Gut dives. Your mothers would never forgive me.’
Hume had brought a little hooded torch with him to aid their way in the blackout, not
that it seemed to be rigorously enforced. Both Harry and Wykham, fresh from bombed-out Britain raised an eyebrow at such slackness, until Hume explained, ‘Bit of a bloody waste of time here really, since this is an island and it’s the easiest thing to tell land from water from the air. From five thousand feet, they say, Grand Harbour sticks out like that thing you’re going to have in your trousers once the chorus girls hit the stage. And anyway, the Eyeties don’t tend to venture out much at night, these days. The Brylcreem Boys have a night fighter unit. Keep ’em in a cage up at Takali and force feed ’em carrots all day. They claim they can spot a black cat in a coal cellar.’
The Union Club was on the top floor of some old Venetian-era palace called the Auberge de Provence. Harry thought he was walking into a Hollywood set for a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. They could hear the music long before the cage lift had clanked them up to the main bar: a band belting out Guy Lombardo’s Penny Serenade, and they weren’t half bad.
He first spotted her talking to the bandleader, by the side of the raised drum kit at the back of the stage. There was a lull in the dancing, so the tight little dance floor, lit from above by a star pattern of guttering faux chandeliers, was all but empty. Only the odd waiter or two, in a tight, white patrol jacket, or folk, table-visiting, were cutting across, so that from where Harry and his two friends were now sitting, on a table with a mob of other Navy officers, you could see down the length of the room.
She was a tall woman, in a sheer, creamy, off-the-shoulder evening gown that hugged her figure to midway down her thighs, and then splayed in creases and ruffles to the floor. Long white gloves sheathed her arms. Even in the suffused light of the place, through the cloud systems of cigarette smoke, he could see her luxuriant hair was the colour of corn, and it didn’t look as if it had come out of a bottle. She wore it a bit like a girl he once knew back home. Janis, the local businessman’s daughter: a real looker who had very set ideas about what she wanted, and the utter certainty she was going to get it. Except this girl – woman, rather – looked far more dangerous. She had her hair set in two huge bangs, swept off her forehead and pinned, so that it appeared the body of her tresses fell from beneath them, in curls to her shoulder. A bit more Betty Grable than Janis, Harry decided, but not as cheap as Miss Grable. Oh no. Especially when she turned to scan the club room, as if looking for someone, and her face broke into a smile as she raised her arm in a wave, so that it caused a little spasm in Harry’s throat. More like Hedy Lamarr, he decided, despite the hair colour. Definitely Hedy Lamarr. Then the band struck up and the lights went down. A man’s theatrical voice announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Katty Kadzow!’ A spotlight came on, and she stepped into it. The band was playing the opening bars to Begin the Beguine, and Harry thought, The last time I heard that was in the wardroom of a Free French submarine . . . But the memory got chased away in an instant, when Katty started to sing.