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Page 21 of Never Tear Us Apart

Chapter Twenty

‘Christina only lives a few streets away,’ Sal explains as we bisect the Gut again and turn onto a wide, elegant street – or triq in Maltese, ‘in an apartment on the edge of Floriana.

The grand buildings that line the street look as if they have escaped any severe damage from the air raids.

The lines of palazzos and palaces hide courtyard gardens and cool vaulted rooms.

I follow Sal, grateful with every step that my feet meet solid ground.

People who just minutes ago were crammed into shelters emerge blinking into the sunlight.

Store owners open their shops. Children gather in a loosely organised group on the street in front of a rickety blackboard, where a woman begins to teach them their times tables.

Older ladies, all dressed in black, sweep the grime off their front steps or sit on chairs, talking and making complicated-looking lace in their laps.

This is the other side of war. For every violent fury spent, there are just people, picking up the shards of their lives two or three times a day, every hour a little more diminished.

Perhaps it’s just surviving, as we are all programmed to do, even in the midst of horror.

But I like to think it’s more than that: it’s ordinary people refusing to let go of the ordinary freedoms some stranger is bent on depriving them of.

‘Professor!’ A young girl looking hardly more than seventeen skips up to Sal. She’s wearing a slash of red lipstick that looks as if it’s been stolen from her mother. ‘I finished the book you gave me – may I read another?’

‘Of course.’ Sal smiles benignly at her as he gestures at me. ‘This is my cousin, Maia. Maia, this is Vittoria. I taught her at school until . . . well quite recently. Vittoria often assists the good doctor and wishes to be a nurse after the war. You still do, yes, Vittoria?’

‘I do.’ Vittoria nods. ‘When the war is over.’

‘Did you enjoy Tess of the d’Urbervilles ?’

‘So much,’ Vittoria tells him. ‘Though the end made me cry. The world is very cruel to young women, Professor.’

‘Thomas Hardy, rarely cheerful,’ Sal says fondly. ‘But, Vittoria, you were always such an enthusiastic pupil.’

‘I had to leave school,’ Vittoria explains, turning to me, unalarmed by the fact that we’ve only just met.

Perhaps when so many people are taken from the city on such a regular basis, sharing with anyone you can find becomes commonplace.

‘My father dies, the war comes. I am alone. I help the doctor when I can, and in the evenings, I . . . work in the bars, you know?’

I do know. I have known many young women like her, out of options and forced to trade the one thing she has left.

‘After the war, I am going to leave Malta and go to England to train as a nurse, and I will wear a bright white starched cap and marry Lawrence Olivier.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ I say.

‘I will bring another book to you tomorrow,’ Sal tells her. ‘Are you well, Vittoria?’

‘I am well.’ Vittoria nods. ‘I have a special friend now. He is kind and says he will take me to England after the war. I wonder if he might even fall in love with me? Well, I’d better go. I have a date with him tonight! Thank you, Professor. Goodbye!’

She races off to her date as though it is with a boy who has courted her with sweet nothings and not with a stranger paying for her survival.

‘She’s very young to be making those kinds of hard choices,’ I say. ‘Couldn’t people have helped her?’

‘We all help her as we can. The doctor cannot pay her, but she can teach her and keep her hope of nursing alive. And I’m afraid some of our good people turned their backs on her when they realised how she had been earning her keep.

Not all are as modern as we are, Maia. Or indeed as Miss Christina and her friends. ’

We stop in front of a door that has been recently painted green, but its weathered surface reveals layers of colour peering through. Straightening his tie, Sal raps the mottled-brass dolphin knocker smartly, and we wait. And wait.

‘Perhaps she’s out,’ I suggest. ‘At the place where she took me to get interrogated.’

‘There is always someone in – we must wait.’ Sal knocks again.

After another minute a tall fair-haired young man in a crumpled RAF uniform opens it, leaning on the doorframe like it’s the only thing that might keep him upright. He is clearly rather the worse for wear.

‘Prof, old chap!’ He swings out and claps Sal on the shoulder. ‘Nice to see you!’

‘Flight Lieutenant Warburton,’ Sal replies formally. ‘I have brought my cousin, Miss Maia Borg, to call on Miss Christina. Is she home? They’ve met before.’

‘Well, hello to you, too,’ Flight Lieutenant Warburton says to me cheerfully.

‘Chris! You have a gentleman caller requesting an audience with you. Oh, and his “cousin”!’ He grins blearily at us both in turn.

‘She’ll be down in a minute when she’s dressed, old chap.

That damn raid quite ruined our rest. Now, if you please, I’m about to lose a year’s wages to a bloody Canadian and his northern sidekick. ’

‘Of course.’ Sal steps inside at Adrian’s gesture, and I see Danny at a table in a small sitting room, alongside another young man, one who looks to me like he should hardly be out of school.

He has the smooth complexion and ruddy cheeks of a very young man and a swathe of blond hair so fine you can see the sunburnt pink of his scalp through its strands.

‘Stitches!’ Danny says, getting up. ‘Hey, are you following me?’

His companion blushes a deeper shade of plum.

‘I thought you were up there?’ I say, pointing at the ceiling.

‘I was meant to be, but the erks couldn’t figure out a way to get my engine to stay inside the Spit.

Mac here’s out for the same reason. That’s the problem when you have a finite number of Spitfires in an air war and no spare parts.

Every day, we have to find new ways to stick ’em back together.

Considering how dangerous it is up there, Command sure are fussy about letting a feller fly a plane with a loose engine.

Damn frustrating if you ask me. Anyway, we’re grounded until tomorrow.

Good to see ya, again, ma’am.’ He tips his hat and winks at me.

‘Don’t mind Champ,’ Warby says, pouring himself a large neat whisky. ‘He’s as sober as a vicar, just plays along with me so that I’ll let my guard down. Works every bloody time. Mac, on the other hand, is sozzled after half a mild stout.’

‘Hey, that’s not true.’ Mac laughs, his eyes glittering in a way that suggests Warby might be right in his assessment.

‘Please to meet you, miss.’ He straightens his shoulders. ‘I’m Flight Officer James Mackay.’ He offers me a smooth young hand, and the blood in his face reaches his temples.

‘Hello, Mac,’ I reply. ‘Yorkshire accent?’

‘That’s right, miss.’ He nods. ‘Scarborough.’

I nod. ‘Lovely spot.’

‘Taking a bit of a beating from that lot at the moment,’ he says. ‘Still, every plane we take down here is one less to bother them there, right, Champ?’

‘Right, son.’ Danny pats Mac on the back in a firm and fatherly way that makes Mac beam. There’s maybe four or five years between them, but it’s clear that Danny is the elder statesman in this friendship and that Mac is his loyal, adoring squire.

‘Christina, are you coming?’ Warby shouts upstairs once again.

Danny smiles at me over Warby’s shoulder as he settles back into the game. It’s a nice smile, more confident and relaxed than it has any business being in the middle of a war, and I get the sense he wears it like a shield.

‘Warby, the hero,’ Sal mutters as we leave them to their game and return to the foot of the stairs. ‘And yet so . . . undisciplined. I’m not familiar with the younger gentleman. I’m afraid they are often not around long enough for one to get to know them.’

‘The hero?’ I repeat. I have a feeling I’ve heard about Warby in my real life.

‘He’s a quite brilliant reconnaissance pilot,’ Sal tells me. ‘And a singular young man – a rebel and often insubordinate but so good at his job that Command takes a lenient view. And he seems to make Christina very happy, though I do believe he has a wife somewhere in England.’

‘Honestly, who hasn’t got a spouse they’ve forgotten about these days?’ Christina appears at the top of the stairs wrapped in a silk robe printed all over with pink roses. She looks like a movie star, frail but luminous.

‘Miss Christina.’ Sal breaks into a wide smile.

‘You said you wanted to keep a close eye on Maia, and I thought perhaps you might start with some sartorial advice. She worked on a farm, you see, until very recently. It was an isolated life, and she has very little notion of feminine style – unlike you.’

‘Oh, Professor, you old charmer.’ Christina giggles, smiling broadly at me.

‘I think Maia here is perfectly stylish in her own way. But yes, I’d be happy to help.

Could do with a bit of light relief. We are at sixes and sevens here, as always.

But that’s what you get with former theatricals, I should say.

Actually, as one of my housemates is our chief costumier, he might be just the ticket. ’

‘Christina and her friends once entertained at the cabaret,’ Sal tells me as we follow her upstairs. ‘After war broke out, they formed a concert party, the Whizz Bangs, to entertain the troops.’

‘We still perform when we can,’ Christina tells me. ‘But now we all have other more important jobs, doing our best for the island that has been so kind to us. What are you doing for the war effort, Maia?’

‘She has been helping on her aunt’s farm on the other side of the island, but she’s come to stay with me now,’ Sal says. ‘We must find her a role here. She has experience in reporting, so I will take her to meet Miss Strickland when she looks appropriate.’

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