“I may have to step outside. Transmitting for a fix, transmitting for a fix.” And after a worrying interval: “Yes, I’m going down in the drink off Saint George’s. Here goes. Hope my brolly works.”
“Good luck, Harry. Transport’s on the way.”
It was extraordinary to hear it played out live, this drama of planes and men going down. With luck, Harry’s parachute would open and the high-speed launch would find him bobbing in the ocean in his Mae West, but it was no longer a concern for those in the Ops Room. They were dealing with an ever-evolving situation. Already, Woody was warning the other pilots of a couple of 109s in the circuit at Ta’ Qali, waiting to jump them when they came back in to land. Only when the raid had played itself out would they all stop and reflect on the skirmish.
This occurred some twenty minutes later, by which time the airfield at Luqa had taken another pitiless pounding and news had come in of the downed pilot’s successful rescue from the water. The new girls went on their shift, and Iris joined Max up on the gallery.
“Sorry about that.”
“You’re a dab hand with that pole of yours.”
Iris checked herself in her vanity mirror. “I’ve had a year of practice.”
On went the lipstick. Some girls ground rice into dust for face powder, but Iris was never short of the real thing, receiving a steady supply of cosmetics from her steady supply of admirers.
“Is it really that long?” Max asked. But looking at her he could believe it. The skin around her eyes appeared looser, her lips less full, and there were dark roots showing in her wavy blond mane.
“I know, I look dreadful.”
“I was about to say quite the opposite.”
Iris capped her lipstick. “You’re a sweetheart. You always were.”
“What do you say to a late lunch at Monico’s? Hot pork sandwiches and John Collinses.”
“I say lead the way.”
Monico’s had been an old haunt of theirs during Iris’s brief stint at the Information Office, and a brace of John Collinses brought out a nostalgic streak in her. She insisted on retracing their history, starting with their first meeting at a dance at the Engine Room Artificer’s Club in Floriana. It had been a rowdy affair, and Iris and her two flatmates had been right in the thick of it.
High-kicking his way across a crowded room while singing “Knees Up, Mother Brown” at the top of his lungs would never be Max’s idea of fun, but Freddie had announced to everyone present that he wouldn’t be banging out any more tunes on the piano until Max joined in. It was Iris who had dragged him from his chair into the fray, Iris who had hooked her arm through his and refused to release him until Freddie turned his gifted hands to some Cole Porter numbers.
At the time, Iris was still a member of the Arabian Knights, a concert party made up of six girls and two young men who walked from the hips down. They were one of the more popular outfits on the island, if only because their routines verged on the downright bawdy. What was it about the English that allowed them to find so much humor in men dressing up as women, and vice versa? Hugh would have said that Shakespeare was to blame.
Max had only once seen the Arabian Knights in action; they’d been mostly on the road in an old Scammell truck provided by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI), performing at airfields and forts and remote gun sites. The arrival of the Luftwaffe in Sicily in early ’41 spelled the end of the troupe, the Germans taking over from their Italian allies and teaching them the true meaning of a bombing campaign. Malta shook to a holocaust that left little place for frivolous entertainments, and the Arabian Knights were forced to disband.
Crueler tongues than Max’s had speculated about Charles Headley’s decision to employ Iris at the Information Office. What did Max care if Headley was getting his oil changed in return for offering her a job? She was a performer, fun to have around, and competent enough when it came to reading out the news bulletins for the Rediffusion. Moreover, she hadn’t fled the island when the opportunity to do so had still existed, which suggested a certain commitment to the cause.
Admittedly, there had been something slightly self-serving about this commitment. At the first opportunity, she had left the Information Office for