Page 50 of Never Tear Us Apart

Chapter Forty-Eight

The red door is standing slightly ajar, just as Christina told me it would be.

It leads into a narrow hallway, and beyond, a splintered door stands open, leading onto a small, square, open courtyard.

Here are the steps that lead to the first floor.

Washing, covered in dust from the earlier raid, hangs on a line stretched between two balconies.

The whole courtyard is in shadow except for one corner, which is lit by a slice of late-afternoon sun.

A young woman sits in that light, her blue dress made more vivid by it. Her head has fallen to her lap, and she is weeping. A cigarette held in a limp hand burns down.

‘Hello?’ I enquire softly from the foot of the steps. ‘I’m Maia, looking for Dr Borg and Vittoria.’

The girl looks up at me, her face gaunt, and gestures to the hallway behind her. I take the steps quickly, but as I move around her, she catches my wrist. I look into a haggard face stained with exhaustion and tears.

‘Are you a nurse?’ she asks. Her accent isn’t Maltese, though I can’t quite place it. ‘Are you here to help Vittoria?’

‘I’m not a nurse,’ I say.

‘We moved her to the big room – better light, you see, and the air from the sea? We left her during the raid – we had to, didn’t we? Do you think she knows we left her?’

Things seem very bad. I can hardly believe it. I only saw her the day before yesterday.

‘I don’t know.’ I wish I had something to tell this frightened woman, something to comfort her with, so instead I’ve chosen honesty. It dawns on me that I have walked into this situation as a twenty-first-century woman with no idea that death can be so near or so certain.

The hallway is lit at either end by a long, shuttered window. Another two women wait outside the room I was directed to. One leans her forehead against the door, her palm flattened against it. The other sits on the tiled floor, her chin resting on her chest.

I’m about to turn away when the door opens, and Stella looks at me.

‘Oh, good,’ she says calmly, handing me a bowl of bloody water. ‘I need fresh, boiled water and more towels, linen. Anything will do as long as it’s absorbent, and I need it fast. Can you do that? These young ladies will help you.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

The door is closed.

‘This way.’ The girl who was sitting on the floor leaps to her feet, desperate to do something, anything. ‘I’m Daphne. This is Gloria.’

‘Hello, I’m Maia,’ I tell them.

‘Thank you, thank you for coming,’ Gloria says. ‘We were afraid no one would come to help Vittoria. When Dr Borg came, we were so grateful. And now you. There are good people, truly.’

She crosses herself, glancing briefly at the heavens.

In a basic kitchen, they show me a pot of water simmering over a fire. Gloria’s face pales as she looks at the blood in the water, and she throws it out into the yard. She begins to tear down the washing.

‘It’s no good,’ she cries. ‘It’s covered in dust. Nothing stays clean!’

Daphne washes and refills the bowl with hot water. ‘Our sheets – they were fresh yesterday, and we have not slept in them. Strip the beds!’

Gloria runs upstairs, and Daphne and I carefully carry the water. Gloria opens the doors for me into the bedroom. Daphne thrusts a bundle of sheets into Stella’s arms. I notice she is careful not to let the girls see into the room. She steps aside slightly to let me pass.

‘Set it there,’ she tells me, pointing to a small chest of drawers.

It’s the smell that hits me first, the sharp scent, followed quickly by the sweet sickly smell of infection and sour sweat.

The windows are open, the curtains billowing in the breeze, but somehow it seems as if the fetid air will not be moved, as if it has its own mass.

A pile of bloody towels slumps at the foot of the bed.

Stella sits down on the edge of the bed, holding the girl’s hand.

‘What should I do?’ I ask her.

‘Very gently, take the towels between her legs and replace them with what you have brought. Gently. She is in pain.’

As I move around the bed, I see Vittoria properly for the first time.

Her dark hair clings to her face, which is sheened in waxy sweat.

It’s hard to match this near-dead girl with the young woman whose eyes shone the last time I saw her, just two days ago.

Vittoria’s complexion is a very pale grey, her parted lips dry and bloodless.

When I lift the sheet that covers her lower half, I see the wad of linen already in place is saturated with red.

She groans quietly as I remove the towel and gently press the fresh sheets into place.

‘Thank you,’ Stella says. ‘I don’t want to let go of her hand again – she thinks I am her mother.’

‘Will she recover?’ I ask, already knowing the answer.

‘She will die,’ Stella says. ‘The water, the sheets, are for her friends’ benefit rather than hers, so they will be able to comfort themselves after she has gone.’

‘Jesus.’ I cover my mouth, my throat suddenly full of grief. ‘I said I’d help her. She promised she’d come to me if she ever needed help.’

Stella’s expression is implacable, detached somehow. She watches Vittoria struggle for another breath like an angel in a stained-glass window, sad and remote.

‘Her pain is eased now, at least,’ she says eventually. ‘I had a little morphine left. Now I have none. She has lost a lot of blood, and sepsis has set in. Her organs are failing. But she is young and was healthy, so her body clutches at life. We must pray that her death is swift.’

‘No penicillin?’ I ask.

Stella shakes her head.

‘I could find some – I can search the island.’ I think of Nicco. ‘I think I know someone who might help.’

‘There is none,’ Stella tells me. ‘I have already sold everything I had of value to buy what stocks Elias had.’ She says this matter-of-factly, as though she already knows I know of Elias and his ways, and is unshocked by it. ‘There is none, and even if there was, it’s too late now, Maia.’

Of all the incredible things I have been through, this is the hardest to believe.

‘Listen, will you go and find Father Vincent at St Paul’s? Many would not come, but he is a good man. He will give her the last rites.’

‘Where will he be?’ I ask, focused by Stella’s commanding tone. ‘I don’t know the area that well.’

‘Of course.’ Stella thinks for a moment. ‘You stay with her. I will fetch him. Hold her hand. Talk to her as her mother would. Do not let her feel alone.’

She stands up, and I take her place, picking up the girl’s hand. It’s freezing cold, even though her body radiates heat.

‘I will return presently,’ Stella says as she closes the door, and I’m alone with Vittoria. She is not the first dying person I have sat with.

Mum was the first, and then . . . then Saria.

The little girl I met that day far away from now.

The little girl I took with me into the underground garage to escape the missiles.

When the building collapsed, she was fatally crushed, but she didn’t die immediately.

For a little while she cried asking for her mother.

So even though I could not see her, I knew she was alive – and dying – her tiny body trapped somewhere beneath mine.

I had sat with Saria, holding her hand until it went cold, pinned in the dark until aid workers came.

Knowing for each long second that I had led her to her death.

With Mum, I talked her through her last morphine-fed fantasies. We marvelled together at the opening of the starry firmament of heaven she told me she could see right above her head.

With Saria, I sang nursery rhymes, long after she could hear them.

For Vittoria, I am lost. What have I to give this girl, who should have had so much more? In the end, all I have is the kindness of lies.

‘Mama?’ Vittoria whispers, breaking my train of thought. ‘Mama?’

‘I’m here,’ I say softly, wishing I could speak Maltese. ‘I’m with you.’

A wail sounds from outside the open window, soon joined by more sobs outside the door. A few seconds later, Stella ushers in a young priest, who crosses to the bed, his solemn gaze settling on Vittoria’s face. I start to get up, but Stella shakes her head.

‘Keep talking,’ she says. ‘Let her hear her mother’s love.’

In the minutes that follow, I hold her hand, murmuring gently under my breath, repeating all the words of comfort my own mother used to whisper to me when I lay awake, afraid of the dark.

I listened to the prayers spoken over her, watching the priest anoint her forehead with oil.

Finally, Stella lets the others in, and they take turns to kiss her goodbye.

We wait together until the air-raid sirens wail again, and we hear the sound of aircraft in the sky. No one leaves.

Outside in the open, the world explodes in a roar.

The building vibrates; plaster showers down from the ceiling.

Fires from the harbour cast their dancing shadows across the wall.

As the hours pass, Stella comes to stand with me, her hand on my shoulder.

The priest continues to pray, and her friends, the last family she will ever have, kneel at her bedside, keeping vigil.

We all understand the danger of remaining here, and yet we stay.

Perhaps the others feel as I do: that this room, in these hours, exists outside time and space, as if the universe has bowed its head just for Vittoria.

And then finally, just as the evening falls silent once again, Vittoria lets out a long rattling breath and the room becomes profoundly quiet.

Vittoria Palermo, seventeen years of age, has gone from this world, and perhaps from all the others, too.