Chapter 13
Inside the lodging house it didn’t get any better. A small scraggy woman was descending the stairs carrying an overflowing bucket and the hallway smelt of something Rosalie couldn’t at first identify.
‘I’m looking for Karmena,’ she said in English.
The woman nodded and pointed to a door that was slightly ajar. Rosalie pushed it open. ‘Karmena?’ she asked.
The woman, who was almost as round as she was high, nodded. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘Kola sent me. I need a room. Do you have one available?’
The woman frowned. ‘You could say I have. But best if I show you.’
Rosalie trailed her up the stairs and through a warren of corridors, past dormitories, family rooms and up even more stairs. She asked where the bathrooms were but was told there were no toilets, no bathrooms, and no kitchens as such.
‘So how do people cook then?’
‘On a kuc˙iniera,’ the woman said, and instantly Rosalie could smell the paraffin that fired such stoves mixed with the pong of a strong disinfectant. Of course, that had been what she’d smelt.
‘A paraffin cart comes round most days.’
‘I saw it. The mule nearly ran me over.’
Karmena laughed. ‘That would be Spiru’s mule. Can be a bit spirited.’
Rosalie glanced around. ‘Where do people wash clothes?’
‘Boil ’em in a bucket on a primus stove.’
Rosalie was shocked by the lack of basic facilities. ‘No single rooms?’
The woman shook her head.
‘Anywhere on this street?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Most lodgin’ ’ouses just for sailors, seven or eight beds each room. They get drunk, need somewhere to sleep.’
‘So where should I go?’
‘You got work?’
‘I’m a dancer.’
‘But you got a job yet? Yes or no?’
Rosalie shook her head.
‘The Evening Star gives performers places to stay. Start there.’
‘It’s closed.’
‘At one o’clock. My husband Gianni is there to do accounts. He runs the place for bigwigs. Hires too. Tell him Karmena sent you.’
Rosalie glanced at her wristwatch. It was still only eleven in the morning. ‘What should I do until then?’
‘Leave your case here. Go for a walk. Valletta, beautiful city.’
Rosalie hesitated and the woman chuckled. ‘I take care. Now you go.’
Rosalie left her case with Karmena and headed off through the cobbled Valletta alleys where thin dogs slunk along the walls and fat cats eyed them haughtily.
Plenty of mice, she thought, maybe rats too.
Yes. Definitely rats. She listened to the hum and rumble of the city and soon understood all the streets were straight, some very narrow indeed, and very steep, whereas the main city streets were much wider.
Turning down one of them, she passed peeling doorways the colour of port, and roads that rose and fell with giddying flights of steps everywhere.
She loved the rows of wooden balconies on the sandstone townhouses – she later learnt they were called gallariji – reaching out over the street and painted in dozens of different colours.
A dark-eyed child ran up to her from one of the narrow alleys. ‘I take you somewhere, lady.’
Rosalie shook her head.
‘English?’
‘No, French.’
‘Better,’ the boy nodded.
‘You don’t like the English?’
‘My mother works for English. My father, he does not like.’
‘What does your mother do?’
The little boy shrugged. ‘Take you somewhere,’ he said again. ‘Gardens. Nice view.’
As they walked, he chattered while she was gradually getting her bearings, which was not as hard as she’d thought it might be because all the streets were part of the same grid layout.
‘Upper Barrakka Gardens,’ the boy proudly said as they arrived.
After she gave him a coin he grinned then darted off.
The boy had been right. The view of the Grand Harbour was stunning.
The air was drenched with the scent of geraniums, roses and jasmine and a breeze carried the salty spray rising from the glittering jewel-like Mediterranean Sea below – lovely after the heady mix of urine, sweating horses, street vendors, and exhaust fumes in the city.
Rosalie felt the tension leave her body for the first time since she left Paris.
The train had taken her through Switzerland and then on to Italy.
All the way to Genoa she felt terrified she might be hauled off and arrested for stealing her mother’s jewels.
The trains had been great until Rome but not nearly so advanced after that.
With some trepidation she’d joined a train heading south swarming with people, chickens, and even goats.
Children wailed, dogs barked and the women gossiped endlessly in rapid Italian.
She tried to ignore them as rural Italy spread out before her – the gnarled wiry farmers bending over their work in the fields and the women clustered together, wearing black.
The train rattled on, its closed windows trapping smoky, greasy air inside the carriage.
Hence her relief when she eventually found her way onto a ferry to Sicily and then to Malta.
It was the furthest she’d ever been from home – but she was free.
Now, in the gardens overlooking the harbour, the sun was scorching and she really needed a hat. In the early morning, the sun had cast a gentle golden light on the baroque buildings of the town but at this point in the day everything seemed bleached of colour.
She felt the sweat dampening her dress. Her back.
Her underarms. Even her eyelids. She spotted a bench in the shade of an umbrella pine tree and moved towards it but at the same time a young man wearing a straw hat and a bright blue shirt approached.
He paused, and with a slight bow allowed her to proceed towards it ahead of him, though as soon as she sat down, he joined her.
‘Tourist?’ he asked, turning his face towards her.
She scrutinised this blonde, blue-eyed, well-groomed man then said, rather archly, ‘No. A dancer.’
Despite her tone, he smiled. ‘I see. And where do you dance?’
Not this again, she thought. ‘The Evening Star,’ she lied.
‘You’re not English.’
‘No.’
‘You sound, I don’t know, maybe French?’
‘You speak French?’ she asked.
‘A little, but I am English. We’re terrifically bad at languages.’
She snorted. ‘Because you are all too superior to learn.’
‘Oi,’ he said in mock dismay. ‘That’s not entirely fair.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Visiting my uncle.’
‘So, you are the tourist.’
He tilted his head and smiled. He really had a lovely smile, she thought, and extremely white teeth.
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I spent most of my summers here as a child. It’s a home from home.’
‘Where is home?’
‘Good old London.’
‘Ah. Well, I’m from Paris.’
‘Wonderful city.’
‘You’ve been there?’
He smiled again and his eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes. I love Paris. You must miss it.’
She shrugged, and knowing she could never ever go back home, felt again that pang of homesickness.
‘I could show you around here,’ he was saying. ‘I say, are you all right?’
‘I’m perfectly fine,’ she said, pulling herself together.
‘I was suggesting, if you like, I could show you around Malta, in your spare time of course. Mdina is a magical place with wonderful hidden palaces. Very ancient. Its walls are intact and there’s only one way in or out. You’ll like it.’
She didn’t know if she would, but she did like him. Like many of the British, he was full of arrogant confidence, but in his case it was rather attractive.
‘Robert Beresford,’ he said and smiled.
Something told her this man was going to play a significant part in her life, so she smiled back and tried out her new name again. So far, she had only used it once when she’d met Charlotte on the boat.
‘Riva,’ she said, turning to him and extending a hand. ‘Riva Janvier.’
Goodbye, Rosalie, she thought.