Chapter 17
Rosalie
Rosalie looked up at a shabby eighteenth-century Maltese town house in the village of Kalkara.
With rooms inside that were let only to foreign performers, it was to be her new home.
She went inside and was shown a large bedroom on the second floor, with a balcony wide enough to sit out on.
She caught her breath when she saw the spectacular views of the Grand Harbour and Valletta itself.
From the Kalkara peninsula the city stood just across the water, shining and golden, and above it fluffy pink clouds floated by lazily.
The liquid shine of gold from the city seemed to spill out onto the water, but of course it was just the reflection.
After her experience at the lodgin’ ’ouse Rosalie hadn’t expected anything as beautiful or convenient as this, only about seven miles from Valletta by road.
‘Quicker to get a ferry or a dghaisa,’ Gianni said.
Thank you,’ she replied as he prepared to leave. ‘For this and for the job. I won’t let you down.’
He grasped her hand and shook it. ‘Be sure you don’t.’
Gianni was a tall muscular man with astonishing dark eyes, a hooked nose, and a powerful presence due, she felt, not merely to his physique.
Two gold teeth had gleamed when he smiled at the mention of his wife Karmena and he had whistled with pleasure when Rosalie auditioned for him.
And yet when he’d shaken her hand with his own gnarled ones, she had felt gripped by the strongest feeling you wouldn’t want to cross a man like that.
Soon after he’d gone, she hung a few of her clothes on a rail behind a gaudy gauze curtain and then wandered down to explore the village of Kalkara itself where she found a square, a church, a café, and a small shop.
She bought fresh fruit and tomatoes from a grocery cart, plus bread, olive oil and cheese from the shop, and decided she would eat on her balcony as the sun went down.
She wasn’t due to start work until the evening after next.
Until then? She wasn’t sure. She seemed to have landed on her feet, but this was a new and different world and she had yet to learn the rules.
On her way up the stairs, she heard the clatter of crockery in the kitchen she was to share with several other girls, so she pushed open the door and entered shyly.
‘Ah,’ a curvaceous blonde said, the moment she spotted Rosalie. The girl had eyes the colour of a stormy sky and spoke in strongly accented English. ‘You are the new girl.’
‘I am.’
‘English?’
‘French. Riva Janvier.’ Her new name felt strange on her tongue.
‘Welcome. My name is Erika. I am from Hungary. You working tonight?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘Come with me tonight and you’ll see what it’s like.’
‘Thanks. I’d love to.’
Erika laughed. ‘Don’t say that until you’ve seen it.’
Later Rosalie was sitting on a leather stool at the highly polished mahogany bar of The Evening Star, a mirrored room painted in colours of crimson and gold and lit only by gaslight.
It was deeply atmospheric and already heady with smoke, but she liked it.
On their way Erika had pointed out the Cairo Club, the Egyptian Queen music hall, the Four Sisters bar, and so many others Rosalie could not recall.
‘Everything is here,’ Erika said. ‘Restaurants, dance halls, jazz bars.’
‘I love jazz,’ Rosalie said. ‘In Paris …’ but then she stopped herself. Best not say too much about Paris.
It was still early and nothing much was happening yet at The Evening Star. She was talking with an English-speaking barman, a Maltese man named Ernest, who was filling her in on what lay ahead.
‘Some of the bars are seedy.’ He shrugged. ‘So the street gets called The Gut. Military come here for a good time one way or another.’
‘And they get what they want?’ she asked.
He raised his brow and gave her a knowing look.
‘So, who works here?’
‘In the street?’
She nodded.
‘Maltese in the clubs and bars as waitresses and barmen like me.’
‘And those?’ She pointed to a glamorous but extremely young woman in an evening dress.
‘She’s one of the hostesses.’
‘What nationality are the clientele?’
‘Americans, British, Italians. You name it.’
‘I’m sharing with a Hungarian girl.’
‘Yes, Erika. Good girl. You’re either one or the other.’
As the club began to fill up Riva – as Rosalie really had to think of herself now – saw that dozens of sailors were beginning to pack the bar. They jostled and laughed and flirted with her, but mostly they bought drinks and moved away to watch the show.
First up was Erika, with two other girls she’d seen earlier but had not been introduced to.
All three looked fabulous in turquoise costumes embellished with feathers and silver sequins.
The dancing was quite tame, Riva thought, though maybe it would hot up as the night went on.
After that, a cross-dressing artist named Tommy-O took the stage.
Dressed in silk and satin with a fabulous red wig that curled onto his shoulders, he was wonderful, making the audience gasp and laugh at the same time.
But when he sang and played the piano, he had them eating out of his hands and you could have heard a pin drop.
The moment he finished the applause, foot stomping, and whistles were deafening.
He was tall and wore dangerously high heels, making him even taller, and when he’d taken his final bow, he came swaying across to the bar, his gait languorous.
From then on, the noise from the raucous crowd was deafening.
And whenever someone opened the main door for air, the sound of men carousing outside was even worse.
Riva went out to look and a mob of sailors staggered past waving beer bottles, arms around each other, singing and weaving down the street.
Barely even singing, she thought. More of a drunken racket.
The air was thick with the smell of smoke and cheap perfume, and something else.
You couldn’t smell menace, but you could feel it.
Riva stepped back in retreat from the catcalls and whistles from three men who were heading directly for her. One caught her by the elbow and while she was grappling with him, she bumped into a small group of heavily made-up women, smoking and leaning against the wall.
‘Watch out,’ one called and pushed her away.
She stumbled, managed to right herself, edged behind the women and made it to the door of the club. It was the interval and inside the crowd had thinned, maybe some had moved on elsewhere. The sound of jazz was now coming from a club lower down the street.
Tommy-O spotted her and beckoned her over. He wore a slinky black dress over which a scarlet satin robe reached the ground. His lips were painted to match and his eyelids were iridescent green. She noticed tiny bubbles of sweat seeping through his heavily powdered face.
‘So, darling, who are you?’ he said, offering her a cigarette.
She shook her head and told him her new name. Stick thin and outrageously handsome, he was courteous and held out his hand. She took to him immediately.
‘Sooo, what brings you here? Escape?’
She blinked but managed to hide her surprise. ‘How did you know?’
He nodded sagely. ‘Pretty much everyone who comes here is escaping something. Politics, families, prison.’
He smiled at her, showing perfect white teeth and an unexpected dimple in the cheeks of his angular face.
‘Guessing yours is a family matter. Doesn’t matter. We’re all equal here. Even the ghosts.’
But Riva was soon to find out that wasn’t true when the next evening, under a clear starry sky, she called on Charlotte.
The address Charlotte had given her turned out to be a tall buttery stone building with the ubiquitous enclosed wooden balconies. She spotted an enormous iron door knocker in the shape of a shell which she thumped on the studded central door.
Moments later the door flew open in answer and Charlotte appeared wearing an immaculate white silk dress dotted with little sprigs of lavender. Riva felt a little underdressed, but Charlotte didn’t seem to notice and ushered her in.
‘Darling, I’m so happy you came. Tea?’
‘Please.’
‘We’re upstairs. Come on.’
Riva followed Charlotte across the front hall and then a second enormous hall with a large round table in the centre and finally up a grand stone staircase, the decorative upright railings painted gold. She ran her hands over the smooth ebony handrail. ‘Do you own this place, Charlotte?’ she asked.
‘God no. Archie and Bobby, a friend of his, have rented it. Rather gaudy I think, but that is real gold on the railings.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘I know – and please call me Lottie. Charlotte makes me feel like my mother. Anyway, this place is sixteenth century and belongs to a Maltese nobleman, a marquis of some sort, but he and his family live in Mdina now.’
‘So … you’re living with Archie already?’
Lottie grinned at her. ‘Not officially. I have my own apartment here.’
She pushed open another door and Riva followed her into a bright salon with tall windows, the panelled ceiling painted white with all the mouldings picked out in gold.
She glanced towards the end of the room where a wide flight of four or five steps led up to a large archway and a bedroom, as if up to a stage.
‘Wow!’ she said. ‘It’s stunning.’
‘Isn’t it just. Lucky old me. Now, write down your address in my book, or I’ll never know how to get hold of you. What have you been doing with yourself?’ Lottie planted a cigarette into a silver holder.
Riva hesitated but decided to be honest. ‘I’m a dancer, I’ve got a job in Strait Street.’
Lottie stepped backwards and would have paled if her complexion were not already so light. Her eyes widened as she faltered over her next words.
‘Um … oh … well … I was about to invite you to a dinner party at The Malta Union Club next Sunday evening. It’s a gentlemen’s club except for these dinners they do, then we girls are invited.’