doubted it. And besides, who was he to pass judgment? An embarrassingly brief encounter with a girl named Felicity after a May Ball at Oxford and a bit of awkward fumbling with Eleanor had represented the entire scope of his sexual experience. Who was he to say what people got up to in the privacy of their bedrooms?
Moreover, since terminating their affair, Mitzi had shown no signs of guilt or regret for what had passed between them. He had fully expected her to withdraw from him, to avoid him whenever possible, but their public relationship had suffered no such reverse. If anything, it had flourished under the unsuspecting eyes of their friends and acquaintances. He still found it strange to spend time with her in company—knowing every inch of the lean body beneath the cotton frock, as well as its most intimate requirements—but her ability to carry on with life regardless had allowed him to package up and parcel off the memories.
That had all changed at Hugh and Rosamund’s drinks party.
My God, I’ve missed you.
A voice straight from their private past, from the flat overlooking Hastings Gardens.
Me too, he had wanted to shout. Me too.
This was the reason he’d been unable to sleep, his brain in open rebellion, deaf to the dictates of his weary body, thoughts of Lilian and Mitzi swirling endlessly, aimlessly, around and around in his head, overlapping, intertwining. And as if that hadn’t been bad enough already, the dead dance hostesses had somehow entered the mix, the pale, lifeless features of Carmela Cassar rising to the surface every so often like some ghoulish phantasm clamoring to be heard. She was unhappy with him, and she had every right to be. What had he done for her? What had he really done for her? No more than the bare minimum, hoping that the affair would somehow resolve itself, or simply go away.
He knew of a number of individuals, men as well as women, who had cracked up and been carted off—one had even tried to end it all with a tube of Veronal—but until now it had never occurred to him to feel much sympathy toward them.
Outside, the first bombs were beginning to fall on Grand Harbour, and a couple of the big guns were barking back. The Bofors wouldn’t open up until the Stukas showed, which they would after the 88s had had their sport, if the pattern of the past week was anything to go by.
Flakes of plaster showered from the ceiling as he wandered through to the living room. Strangely, the prospect of observing a bombing raid on his doorstep almost seemed like light relief after the mental inquests of the past few hours. He pushed open the shutters and stepped out onto the balcony.
He just had time to register the pall of dust hanging over the dockyards and Senglea before a column of water erupted from French Creek. It stood tall and upright, frozen in motion, before collapsing in on itself. Down below, by the bastion wall, the boys in the Bofors gun pit were scanning the skies. If anyone had a right to crack, it was them, especially since the Germans had started targeting the gun emplacements. They didn’t appear too perturbed, though. A couple of them were even laughing.
A few minutes later, they weren’t.
The Stukas came in waves, a cascade of dropping planes, plunging almost vertically through the barrage, shrugging aside the few puffs of pale smoke writhing in the sky. Gone were the days when the Grand Harbour barrage had looked like a giant chestnut tree in full flower, and admiration for the gallantry of the enemy pilots had been at its height. This ack-ack was small beer by comparison, little more than a thin splatter.
He spotted a bare section of four Spitfires following the Stukas in, looking to get among them, waiting for them to come out of their dives. This was the moment when the Stuka was at its most vulnerable, when its bombs had been released and the German pilot flicked the gizmo that pulled the aircraft up on its tail and for a few brief seconds both he and the rear gunner blacked out from the rapid climb. Easy meat for a Spitfire pilot who knew how to time his attack.
So it proved. Max saw two rising Stukas shredded by cannon fire, spinning away and dropping into the harbor. Their ammo exhausted, the Spitfires headed for home, running the gauntlet of 109s waiting for them over