The Information Officer

Yes, thought Max, Rosamund will be most pleased with her unexpected guest.

She was.

Her hand even went to her hair when she greeted them at the door, something it had never done for Max.

The house sat near the top of Prince of Wales Road in Sliema, just shy of the police station. It was typical of many Maltese homes in that the unassuming façade gave no indication of the treasures that lay behind it. The wooden entrance door was flanked by two windows, with three more windows on the upper floor united by a stone balcony overhanging the street. Perfectly symmetrical, the front of the house was unadorned except for a brass nameplate set in the white stucco—Villa Marija—and a small glazed terracotta roundel above the entrance which showed a disconsolate-looking Virgin clutching her child.

Rosamund was wearing an oyster-grey satin evening gown, and once her hand had tugged self-consciously at her auburn locks, Max made the introductions. Rosamund offered a slender hand, drawing Pemberton inside as they shook, which permitted her to fire an approving look over his shoulder at Max as she did so.

The entrance hall was cool and cavernous, impeccably decked out with antique furniture. A Persian rug sprawled at their feet and a handful of colourful, impressionistic paintings hung from the walls. Pemberton looked mildly stunned.

‘Tell me, Edward, you aren’t by any chance related to Adrian Pemberton, are you?’

‘If he lives in Chepstow Crescent, then he’s my cousin, I’m afraid.’

‘Why should you be afraid?’

‘You obviously haven’t heard.’

‘No, but I can’t wait.’

She hooked her arm through his, steering him across the drawing room towards the large walled garden at the rear of the house.

‘Has he done something terribly wicked? I do hope he’s done something terribly wicked. It would bear out all my suspicions about him.’

Max dumped his scuffed leather shoulder bag on the divan and followed them outside.

Rosamund had three rules when it came to her ‘little get-togethers’. The first was that she personally greeted everyone at the door. The second was that it was unforgivably rude to speculate about the source of the copious quantities of spirits on offer, when it was barely possible to locate a bottle of beer on the island. The third rule stated quite simply that there was to be no ‘talking shop’ after the first hour, to which end she would ring a small hand bell at the appointed time.

‘All week I get nothing from Hugh but barrages and Bofors and Junker 88s. For a few small hours, I’d like to talk about something else, and I’m sure you all would too.’

Hugh was her husband, a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Artillery. A mathematician of some standing before the war, it was Hugh who had worked out the intricate calculations behind the coordinated box barrage over Grand Harbour—an impressive feat, and one which had seen him elevated to the position of senior staff officer at RA HQ. In his early forties, he looked considerably older, which played to his private passion—the theatre—making him eligible for a host of more senior roles, which he scooped up uncontested every time the Malta Amateur Dramatic Club put on one of their plays. He was always trying to get Max to audition for some token part to make up the numbers: butler, chauffeur, monosyllabic house guest.

While Rosamund abandoned her first rule in order to parade her new catch around the garden, Max made for the drinks table in the grateful shade beneath one of the orange trees. True to form, there was no one to pour the drinks. It wouldn’t be good for relations if the Maltese staff were to witness the excesses of their brothers-in-suffering. Max was concocting a whisky-and-soda when he heard a familiar voice from behind him.

‘Ah, thou honeysuckle villain.’

‘Henry the Fourth,’ Max responded, without turning.

‘Not good enough and you know it.’

Max swivelled to face Hugh, whose forehead, as ever, was beaded with perspiration. It was an old and slightly tedious game of theirs. Hugh liked to toss quotations at him, usually Shakespeare, but not always.

‘Henry the Fourth, Part II,’ said Max.

‘Damn.’

‘Mistress Quickly to Falstaff. I studied it at school.’

‘Double damn. That makes three in a row.’

‘But only twenty-two out of thirty-eight.’

Hugh gave a little chortle. ‘Glad to see I’m not the only one keeping score.’

‘Speaking of scores, congratulations on your century.’

‘Yes, quite a month. One hundred and two, all told.’

‘One hundred and one; 249 Squadron are claiming the Stuka over Ta’ Qali.’

‘Bloody typical.’

‘Let them have it. Their heads are down right now.’

‘Not for much longer.’

Max hesitated. ‘So the rumours are true.’

‘What’s that, old man?’

‘They’re sending us another batch of Spitfires.’

‘Couldn’t possibly say—it’s Top Secret.’

‘Then I’ll just have to ask Rosamund.’

Hugh laughed. His wife had a reputation for being ‘genned up’ on everything. No news, however trivial, slipped through Rosamund’s net. Given her connections across the Services, it was quite possible that she knew near on as much as the Governor himself. The fact that she had cultivated a close friendship with His Excellency—or ‘H. E.’, as she insisted on referring to him—no doubt boosted her store of knowledge.

‘I’ll be right back,’ said Hugh, grabbing a bottle. ‘Damsel in distress over by the bougainvillea. Trevor Kimberley’s better half. A bit on the short side, but easy on the eye. And thirsty.’

‘We like them thirsty.’

‘Thou honeyseed rogue.’

‘Henry the Fourth, Part II.’

‘Doesn’t count,’ said Hugh, disappearing with the bottle.

Max turned back to the drinks table and topped up his glass. Hugh was right; April had been quite a month—the darkest yet. The artillery might have knocked down over a hundred enemy aircraft, but that was largely due to the more frequent and promiscuous raids. The figures were in, and the Luftwaffe had flown a staggering 9,600 sorties against the island in April, almost double the number for March, which itself had shattered all previous records. The lack of any meaningful competition from the boys in blue had also contributed to the artillery’s impressive bag. There weren’t many pilots who’d logged more than a few hours of operational flying time all month, thanks to the glaring lack of serviceable Spitfires and Hurricanes. Even when the airfields at Ta’ Qali, Luqa and Hal Far pooled their resources, you were still looking at less than ten. The pilots were used to taking to the air with the odds mightily stacked against them—things had never been any different on Malta, and you rarely heard the pilots complain—but what could a handful of patched-up, battle-scarred crates really hope to achieve against a massed raid of Junker 88s with a covering fighter force of sixty?

Things might have been less dispiriting if a large flock of spanking new Spits hadn’t flown in just ten days ago—forty-six in all, fresh from Greenock in Scotland by way of Gibraltar. The US Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Wasp had seen them safe as far as the waters off Algiers, and the fly-off had gone without a hitch, all but two of the batch making it to Malta on the long-range fuel tanks. It had seemed too good to be true. And it was. Field-Marshal Kesselring, sitting safely in Sicily, was no fool. He had obviously got wind of the reinforcement flight and figured it best to wait for the aircraft to land before making his move. Within three days of their arrival almost half of the new Spitfires had been destroyed, and the rest had been put out of action by the Luftwaffe’s intensive carpet-bombing of the airfields.

Kesselring had his man on the ropes and was going for the knockout. He knew it, they knew it. Because without fighter aircraft to challenge the Luftwaffe’s aerial dominance, there was little hope of any supply convoys getting through. And if that didn’t happen very soon, the guns would fall silent and the island would starve. Invasion, an imminent threat for months now, would inevitably follow.

Christ, it was unthinkable. So best not to think about it, Max told himself, topping up his glass once more and turning to survey the garden.

He found himself face to face with Mitzi.

She had crept up on him unannounced and was regarding him with a curious and slightly concerned expression, her startling green eyes reaching for his, a stray ray of sunlight catching her blonde hair. Not for the first time, he found himself silenced by her beauty.

‘What were you thinking?’

‘Nothing important.’

‘Your shoulders were sagging. You looked…deflated.’

‘Not any more.’

‘Flatterer.’

‘It’s true.’

‘If it’s true, then why didn’t you even look for me?’

‘I did.’

‘I was watching you from the moment you arrived.’

‘You were talking to that bald chap from Defence Security over by the bench.’

‘Well, I must say, you have excellent peripheral vision.’

‘That’s what my sports master used to say. It’s why he stuck me in the centre of the midfield.’

‘You don’t really expect me to talk about football, do you?’

‘When Rosamund rings her bell we might have no choice.’

A slow smile broke across her face. ‘My God, I’ve missed you,’ she said softly and quite unexpectedly.

The desire in her voice was palpable, almost painful to his ears.

‘You’re breaking the rules,’ said Max.

‘Damn the rules.’

‘You’re forgetting—you were the one who made the rules.’

‘Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Max.’

‘It’s the best I can come up with under the circumstances.’

‘Now you’re being abstruse.’ She handed him her empty glass. ‘Mix me another, will you?’

‘Remind me.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Bandits at one o’clock,’ he said in a whisper.

He had spotted them approaching over her shoulder: Hugh with Trevor Kimberley’s dark and pretty wife in tow.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mitzi sighed volubly. ‘Another gin-and-French.’

Max took her glass. ‘So where’s Lionel? Out on patrol?’

Hugh was within earshot now. ‘Be careful, old chap, asking questions like that can land a man in deep water.’

‘Hello, Margaret,’ said Max.

Margaret Kimberley nodded benignly and maybe a little drunkenly.

‘I mean,’ Hugh persisted, ‘why would you want to know the details of what our noble submariners are up to?’

‘Besides, I’m hardly the person to ask,’ said Mitzi. ‘Lionel doesn’t tell me anything. One day he’s gone, then one day he’s back, that’s all I know.’

‘It’s all any of us needs to know.’

‘Trevor tells me nothing,’ chipped in Margaret.

Hugh peered down at her. ‘That, my dear, is because your Trevor does next to nothing for most of the time. Take it from me as his commanding officer.’

‘Somehow, Hugh, I can’t think of you as a commanding officer,’ Mitzi chimed, a playful glint in her eye. ‘A genial one, maybe, and slightly inept, but not a commanding one.’

Margaret’s hand shot to her mouth to stifle a laugh, which drew an affronted scowl from Hugh.

‘Bang goes Trevor’s promotion,’ said Max, to more laughter.

A little while later the ladies left together for the far end of the garden. Max fought to ignore the lazy sway of Mitzi’s slender hips beneath her cotton print dress.

‘Entre nous,’ said Hugh, considerably less abashed about admiring the view, ‘all the subs will be gone for good within a week or so.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, you’ve seen the pasting they’ve been taking down at Lazaretto Creek. And since Wanklyn came a cropper…’

The loss of the Upholder a couple of weeks back had rocked the whole garrison, right down to the man on the street. Subs had been lost before, subs driven by good men known to all, men who had once lit up the bar at the Union Club and whose bones were now resting somewhere on the seabed. ‘Wankers’ Wanklyn was different, though. A tall, softly spoken Scotsman with a biblical beard, he was modest in the way that only the truly great can afford to be. With well over 100,000 tons of enemy shipping under his belt and a Victoria Cross on his chest, he exuded a quiet invincibility which others fed off, drew strength from. Not one of his peers begrudged him his star status because he never once played to it; he just got on with the job. And now he was gone, sent to the bottom, a mere human being after all.

As the Information Officer, Max had been the first to learn of the Upholder’s fate. It was buried away in the transcript of an Italian broadcast—a brief mention of a nameless submarine destroyed in an engagement off Tripoli. He had made some discreet enquiries, enough to narrow the field to the Upholder, and then he had sat on the news for a couple of days.

Yes, he had wanted Wanklyn to prove him wrong, he had wanted to see the Maltese packing the bastions again, cheering the Upholder home, straining to see if there were any new chevrons stitched to the Jolly Roger she was flying. But he had known in his bones that it wasn’t going to happen, he had known that what he needed was a couple of days to figure out how to play it, how to soften the blow for his readers and listeners.

But that was then, and this was now, and while he understood that pulling the subs out of the island might be the judicious thing to do, he wasn’t thinking about his job and how he was going to break the news on the island, he was thinking about Mitzi. If the subs were really leaving, then she would be too; posted elsewhere with her husband. Where would they end up? Alexandria, probably. He wrestled with the notion—separated from Mitzi by nigh on a thousand miles of water—but it was too big and unwieldy to get a grip on.

Hugh misconstrued his silence as professionalism. ‘Mum’s the word, but I thought I should tip you the wink.’

‘Thanks, Hugh, I appreciate it.’

‘You’ll find a way to present it in a positive light, you always do.’ He rested a hand on Max’s shoulder. ‘Now go and join the other renegades in the crow’s nest. Freddie and Elliott are already up there. No Ralph, though—he called earlier to say he can’t get away.’

Max did as he was told, eager for the distraction of his friends, the chance to throw a blanket over his feelings. Villa Marija had been occupied by a naval officer before the war, and its large flat roof, still referred to as the crow’s nest, was where the younger crowd generally gathered to flap and caw. Anything under the age of thirty was deemed to be young, and you were never quite sure what you were going to find when you stepped from the stairwell into the glare.

There was usually a pleasing smattering of adolescent daughters in colourful home-stitched frocks, still coming to terms with their new breasts, which they wore with a kind of awkward pride. Circling them, inevitably, would be the younger pilots, barely more than boys but their speech already peppered with RAF slang. They were always taking a view on things—a good view, a dim view, an outside view, a ropey view—or accusing each other of ‘shooting a line’. Enemy bombers were ‘big jobs’, enemy fighters ‘little jobs’; the cockpit was their ‘office’; and they never landed, they ‘pancaked’. The thing they feared most in a flap was being bounced by a gaggle of little jobs from up-sun.

Sure enough, the pilots were there, a bevy of slender young things with flushed complexions hanging on their every word. Others hovered nearby, one ear on the tales of doughty deeds. The airmen were the only ones in the garrison capable of carrying the battle to the enemy, and their stories offered a tonic against the daily round of passive resistance.

Freddie and Elliott were well out of earshot at the far end of the roof terrace. Freddie was making good use of a large pink gin, his face a picture of evident distaste at whatever it was that the tall American was telling him. Max pushed his way through the throng towards them.

‘Gentlemen.’

‘Ah, Maximillian,’ said Elliott. ‘Just in time.’

‘For what?’

‘A little conundrum I was posing to Freddie here.’

‘Is that what you call it?’ grimaced Freddie.

‘Well, it sure is for their commanding officers.’

‘Sounds intriguing,’ said Max.

‘It rapidly becomes disgusting.’

Elliott laughed. ‘I hadn’t figured you for an old prude.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with prudishness,’ Freddie bristled. ‘It’s a question of…well, morality.’

‘Ah, morality…’

‘To say nothing of the law.’

‘Ah, the law…’ Elliott parroted, with even more scepticism.

‘You trained as a lawyer, you must have some respect for the law.’

‘Sure I do. You don’t want to screw with an institution that can send an innocent man to the electric chair.’ Elliott turned to Max before Freddie’s frustration could shape itself into a response. ‘You want to hear it?’

‘Fire away.’

‘It’s very simple. You’re a wing commander taking a break from it all up at the pilots’ rest camp on St Paul’s Bay. You know it? Sure you do, from when Ralph was wounded.’

‘I do.’

‘Then you can picture it. It’s late and, okay, you’re a bit tight. But, hey, who wouldn’t be, after all you’ve been through these past months? Anyway, you’re feeling good and you’re looking for your room. And you find your room. Only it isn’t your room. It’s someone else’s room. And that someone else is in what you think is your bed with someone else.’

‘You’re losing me.’

‘Stay lost,’ was Freddie’s advice.

‘There are two guys in the bed, okay? And they’re, well, I don’t how to put it…’

‘I think I get your meaning.’

‘Of course you do, you went to an English boarding school.’

‘As did you,’ said Freddie, ‘in case you’d forgotten.’

‘And a sorry dump it was too. Anyway, they’re good men, officers, both of them. One’s in your squadron, the other’s not, but you know him. And he’s a first-class pilot, reliable, what you fellows would call a “press-on” type…’ Elliot paused. ‘What do you do?’

‘What do I do?’

‘What do you do?’

‘Well, I order them to desist at once.’

Elliott laughed. ‘I think you can assume they desisted the moment you opened the goddamn door. Do you report them?’

‘Report them?’

‘To the Air Officer Commanding. It’s not a question of morality, or the law, or even of taste. I mean, I’ve never felt the need to place my penis in another man’s dung—’—‘Oh Christ,’ Freddie blurted into his gin—‘but it doesn’t stop me being able to make a judgement on the situation.’

Max thought on it. ‘I don’t report them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Morale. A squadron’s like a family.’

‘You’re ready to lie to your family?’

‘No. Yes. I suppose. If the situation calls for it.’

‘Go on,’ said Elliott. ‘What else, aside from morale?’

‘Well, the two individuals in question, of course. They’d be packed off home and everyone would know why. It would leak out.’

‘An unfortunate turn of phrase, under the circumstances.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Elliott!’ exclaimed Freddie.

Elliott ignored him. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Three differing views. Freddie said he’d report them, you’re a “no”, and I’m for reporting them.’

‘I thought you said three.’

‘There’s a difference between me and Freddie. He’s a moralist. Me, I’m a pragmatist. I’d report them, but only ’cos if I didn’t and word got out that I hadn’t then it’d be my head on the block.’

‘So what does that make me?’ asked Max.

‘That makes you a sentimentalist,’ was Elliott’s sure-footed response.

‘Oh, come on—’

‘Relax, there are worse things to be than a sentimentalist.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Freddie, ‘you should try being a moralist.’

It was good to hear Freddie crack a joke—he had seemed strangely withdrawn, somehow not himself. Max was in a position to judge. They had been firm friends, the best of friends, for almost two years now, and in that time he’d learned to read Freddie’s rare down moods: the faint clouding in the cobalt blue eyes, the slight tightening of the impish grin. They were still there now, even after the laughter had died away and the conversation had turned to Ralph, the missing member of their gang. He was a pilot with 249 Squadron at Ta’ Qali, a burly and garrulous character who had taken the squadron’s motto to heart one too many times: Pugnis et calcibus—‘With Fists and Heels’. Elliott had come late to the party, materializing as if from nowhere around Christmas, hot on the heels of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, but in four short months he’d stitched himself into the fabric of their little brotherhood lorded over by Hugh. He’d even got them all playing poker.

Elliott had a keen ear for scandal and was recounting a lurid story he’d heard from Ralph involving a chief petty officer’s wife and a Maltese gardener when the tinkle of Rosamund’s bell rang around the rooftop.

‘Most of you know what this means,’ she announced from the top of the steps. ‘Turn your minds and your talk to higher matters, to life and to art and, I don’t know, past loves and future plans.’

‘But I was just hitting my stride.’

‘My dear Elliott, I doubt it was anything more than mere gossip.’

‘True, but of the most salacious kind.’

‘Then be sure to search me out before you leave.’

This drew a few chuckles from the assembled company. These died suddenly as the plaintive wail of the air-raid siren broke the air.

Some groaned. They had all been expecting it. Breakfast, lunch and cocktail hour, you could almost set your wristwatch by the Germans and their Teutonic time-keeping.

They turned as one towards Valletta. From the high ground of Sliema, Marsamxett Harbour was spread out beneath them like a map, its lazy arc broken by the panhandle causeway connecting Manoel Island, with its fort and submarine base, to the mainland. In the background, Valletta reared majestically from the water, standing proud on her long peninsula, thrusting towards the open sea. Beyond the city, out of sight, lay the ancient towns and deepwater creeks of Grand Harbour, home to the naval dockyards, or what remained of them.

One of the more eagle-eyed pilots was the first to make out the flag being raised above the Governor’s Palace in Valletta.

‘Big jobs,’ he announced.

‘There’s a surprise.’

‘Where do you think they’re headed?’

‘The airfields, probably Ta’ Qali.’

‘The dockyards are due a dose.’

It was a strange time, this lull before the inevitable storm, the seven or so minutes it took the enemy aircraft to make the trip from Sicily. All over the island people would be hurrying for the underground shelters they had hewn from the limestone rock, the same rock with which they had built their homes, soft enough for saws and planes when quarried, but which soon hardened in the Mediterranean sun.

Had Malta been blanketed with forests, had the Maltese chosen to build their homes of wood, then the island would surely have capitulated by now. Stone buildings might crumble and pulverize beneath bombs, but they didn’t catch fire. And it was fire that did the real damage, spreading like quicksilver through densely populated districts, of which there were many on Malta. The island was small, considerably smaller than the Isle of Wight, but its teeming population numbered more than a quarter of a million. Towns and villages bled into each other to form sprawling conurbations ripe for ruin, and while they had suffered terribly, the devastation had always remained localized.

In the end, though, it was the underground shelters—some of them huge, as big as barracks—which had kept the casualty rates so low. The Maltese simply descended into the earth at the first sign of danger, taking their prayers and a few prized possessions with them. Max liked to think of it as an inborn urge. The island was honeycombed with grottoes, caves and catacombs where their ancestors had sought refuge in much the same way long before Christ walked the earth or the Egyptians threw up their pyramids. The threat might now be of a different nature, but the impulse remained the same.