Chapter 41 #2
The second woman, Giovanna, nodded and took the sheets of paper away.
‘I am French,’ Riva said. ‘But I’ve lived here since 1925.’
‘Indeed. I have heard of your efforts to rectify the problems with prostitution. Very outspoken, I understand.’
‘I did what I could.’
‘Your command of English is the most important thing, although you still have to pass the test and be cleared by security. As you have been here for so long and have a good track record, that shouldn’t be a problem.’
Riva crossed her fingers behind her back.
Giovanna came back in and gave the officer the papers.
Roberts glanced down at a number at the top encircled by green. ‘Well, you have top marks. You have the go-ahead from me. Giovanna, take her to security please.’
In security a bald man went over her application and asked her a few questions about her background and whether she visited Italy much before the war and did she have any German ancestry.
When she replied in the negative, he asked about her work for Addison.
The questions went on and she worried her false papers might be her undoing.
But she now had medical cards and an insurance number in her new name, plus her false passport, and nothing was said.
But still when he let her go she felt sure she must have failed.
However, much to her surprise, she received a letter soon after telling her she’d got the job.
Two days later she was escorted down to the underground Lascaris War Rooms, which Linda, the woman in charge, laughingly called ‘The Hole’.
Riva could see why. Much of it was a maze of gloomy sunless tunnels and grim chambers, reminding Riva of a claustrophobic rabbit warren.
The entire complex had been formed from old tunnels built by the Knights of St John but British forces brought in miners from Yorkshire and Wales to explode parts of the rock and cliff.
So, beneath the Upper Barrakka Gardens overlooking the Grand Harbour the tunnels had been extended for the RAF and the navy.
The miners also developed miles of tunnels beneath the city as shelters for the people, including carving out small chambers where families could find some privacy during the air raids.
Riva was shown the different rooms. The plotting room – No.
8 Sector Operations Room – where she would work, was overlooked by a gallery from which the commanders could look down to see the enormous table below where the positions of everything were marked.
She was also shown a coastal defence room, an anti-aircraft operations room, and several others.
‘The air is mechanically ventilated through metal piping retrieved from ships that have been sunk in the Grand Harbour,’ Linda said proudly. ‘You start on Monday, but remember we are the nerve centre of Malta’s defence, and you must never talk about what we do here. Understand?’
The weekend was relatively quiet, and Riva managed some unbroken sleep apart from the dreams of Bobby that had taken her by surprise.
When she started work as a plotter on that first Monday morning, she stared at the huge RAF plotting table where she saw a map of Malta and the area around it, including some of Sicily and the Aeolian islands.
When she glanced up at the gallery above and the men in the gods – as the gallery was known – she stepped back in shock.
‘That’s the leader of D-watch,’ Linda whispered, seeing her looking. ‘Our senior controller, Group Captain Sir Robert Beresford, and he’s aided by Flight Lieutenant Weston.’
Riva could not speak, just nodded and longed to make a run for it. Did Bobby know she would be working here? Perhaps if she kept her head down and just got on with her work, he might not even notice her.
She put on her headphones as she had been shown and the messages from the filter room began coming in.
Everyone immediately looked serious, and all other thoughts left her mind as she began to assemble and then move the aircraft blocks around.
She had to use a long stick to plot the locations as the aircraft travelled south and approached Malta and she was terrified of getting it wrong.
There was a rush of activity among the men above her as the pilots’ voices were broadcast from loudspeakers and squadrons were scrambled.
When they heard ‘Tally-ho’ in their headphones, all that was left for the girls to do was pray that the pilots would be safe.
Most of the time Riva had neither time to think, sleep or breathe, and it was after a night like that that she came out into the thick dusty morning air to find Bobby looking exhausted, smoking a cigarette and leaning against a wall.
‘Hello, Riva,’ he said and offered her a cigarette.
She took one. More from nerves than because she really wanted one. She rarely smoked.
‘I’ve been hoping we might have a chat.’
‘What about?’ she said. ‘I mean, what about, sir?’
He smiled. ‘Glad to see you haven’t changed.’
She snorted. ‘Oh, but I have.’
‘I’m sorry. Truly. But let’s not quarrel. We were friends, weren’t we?’
So that’s what we’re calling it, she thought but didn’t say.
‘I’m heading for the RAF Officers’ Mess at the Xara Palace in Mdina. Like to accompany me? Maybe pop in to see Addison? We both have a two-day break, I believe, or will your boyfriend be upset if you leave Valletta?’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Otto, isn’t it?’
She shook her head and laughed. ‘Otto’s not my boyfriend. I’m just staying in a room in his apartment,’ she said and saw a flash of relief on his face, although he hid it quickly.
‘So? Mdina?’
‘All right,’ she said despite her mind turning somersaults as it warned her to step away.
‘I have a staff car and a driver. But probably best if I drive. The RAF are a bit sticky when it comes to officers cavorting with the young ladies of Lascaris.’
‘One, I have no intention of cavorting and two, I’m hardly a young lady any more.’
‘You look exactly the same.’
‘I’ll soon be thirty-five, Bobby. There’s no way I’m just the same.’
‘Well, I don’t think they can object to two old friends having a drink together. Do you still stay in your apartment at Addison’s place? He told me all about it and your work on his books. They’ve been hugely successful.’
‘I was happy working with Addison.’
‘I’m surprised you weren’t spirited off to work in the publishing houses of London or New York.’
‘I had offers.’
‘I’m sure,’ he paused. ‘And you never married?’
‘No.’
They remained in silence for the rest of the way.
He slowed down as they approached the ancient walls of Mdina and suggested that before they visit Addison, they stop at his apartment for a drink.
She felt hesitant. Was it a good idea? Probably not and yet she heard herself agreeing, and they climbed the stairs to the place she had spent so many happy hours with him.
‘Whisky?’ he asked, raising the bottle.
‘A small one.’
They carried their drinks out onto the little terrace where she sipped her whisky and neither of them spoke. She heard dogs barking in the nearby town and smelt woodsmoke in the air, saw the winding white lanes and the sloping fields where the old donkeys spent their days.
He sat opposite her staring at the tiled floor. Then he swallowed visibly and said, ‘I feel I should explain.’
‘No need,’ she said, holding herself tight, because if she were to allow the feelings inside her to release, she would be finished.
‘That isn’t true. I behaved—’
‘Appallingly,’ she interjected. ‘You behaved appallingly.’
‘I …’
She shrugged. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It was years ago. We’re different people now.’
‘Are we? I never stopped loving you.’
At this she rose to her feet in anger. ‘Well I stopped loving you.’ She spat out the words, headed inside and made straight for the door.
‘Please don’t go.’
She turned, watched him stand, reach out a hand and take a limping step towards her.
‘No.’ She shook her head, raced down the stairs and only when she had hidden herself away in one of the narrow cobbled streets, did she lean against a wall and cry, great gulping sobs, her body wracked with pain as she bent double.
How dare he come here and say that? How stupid was she to have come with him? She wasn’t a child, for God’s sake.
Moments later she heard uneven footsteps, tried to wipe her face with her sleeve, began to walk away.
Then he was there pulling at her elbow. She fought him off then pounded his chest again and again as if she might pound out the pain that had been buried inside her for so long.
The pain that she’d never given herself permission to fully feel.
‘Riva.’ His voice broke.
‘No.’
‘Please.’
‘You broke my fucking heart, you bastard.’
‘I …’
She swayed, overcome by the ferocious anger coursing through her body, making her heart pound, her blood boil … she gasped for air but then she went limp suddenly, crumpled against the wall like a rag doll.
‘You … broke … my heart,’ she repeated. ‘And I lost our baby.’
‘Baby?’
The silence of Mdina seemed to deepen even further as he helped her to straighten up. He wrapped his arms around her and then they both wept – she with the relief of telling him, he … well she didn’t know for sure, but sorrow, she thought.
When the tears were over, he whispered. ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t know you were pregnant.’
‘Would it have changed anything?’
He looked horrified. ‘Of course. I would never have let you go through it alone. I know you’ll never be able to forgive me, but I’ll do anything to make this better, anything you want.’
She stiffened then pulled away. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Some things can’t be fixed. I’m going now, Bobby.’
‘Let me drive you.’
‘No. I’d rather get the bus. Better not waste the petrol.’