A Dead Man in Malta (10 page)
Seymour waited. ‘They would see anyone come in, wouldn’t they?’
Mario, it seemed, could only nod.
‘If they were there,’ said Seymour. ‘Were they there, Mario?’
Mario looked intensely miserable.
‘All the night? Or did you have to go off somewhere? Together? The two of you.’
‘No,’ said Mario, with surprising definiteness.
Seymour was puzzled. ‘No?’
‘Not the two of us.’
‘Just one of you, then?’
‘
Iva
.’ So low that Seymour could hardly hear him. Malti for yes.
‘Which one of you? Umberto?’
‘
Iva
.’
‘He had to go off somewhere, leaving you on your own?’
‘
Iva
.’
‘Do you know why he had to go off?’
Mario was silent.
‘He had to check on somebody, perhaps?’
After a moment there was the briefest of nods.
‘Or was it something else?’
Mario’s face was wooden.
Seymour tried a different tack. ‘You were left on your own, then, Mario. Did you mind?’
Mario looked puzzled. ‘Oh, no.’ After a minute he volunteered: ‘I’m used to it.’
‘It often happens?’
‘Not often.’
He corrected himself. ‘Quite often.’
‘So you were on your own, then?’
Again, after a moment, the nod.
‘So you were the only one who was there, then, when they discovered that the sailor had died?’
‘
Iva
.’
‘On your own?’
‘The doctor was there. And the nurse. Two nurses. I didn’t have to … do anything. They decided to leave him there. Until another doctor came in. It was just that they thought … that he might have to be moved. That is why they called … a porter.’
‘You?’
‘Me, yes.’
After a moment he said: ‘They usually do move them. If it’s at night. So that in the morning it’s gone. When everybody wakes up.’
‘But not on this occasion?’
‘No.’
‘It wouldn’t have been easy, anyway, if you were on your own. Were you still on your own?’
‘
Iva
.’
‘Umberto wasn’t back?’
‘
Le
.’ No.
‘When did he come back?’
‘Later,’ said Mario unwillingly. After a moment—‘I haven’t told my mother,’ he said. ‘She would be angry.’
‘With you? Or with Umberto?’
‘With both of us. If she knew.’
* * *
Chantale feared that this was going to be a long day. Apart from the excitement of the girl in the cupboard, and the rather different interest provided by the difficult Mr Vasco, nothing, but nothing had happened. It was much the same in the new ward. And that seemed likely to be the way that it normally was in wards. Unless there was some sort of crisis. Or unless there was a murder, of course.
She wondered what was the point of her being there. What was she supposed to see? What was she expected to be observing?
As the morning wore on she began to feel more and more mutinous.
It was a relief when Seymour put in an appearance, although also an irritation in that the nurses paid much more attention to him than they had to her. This was true even of Macfarlane, that old, cold stick. How had he managed to swarm his way through the defences of even that pillar of Scottish rectitude? And then Chisholm in the other ward.
Nor was her irritation mollified when she was allowed to take him into the nurses’ room and offer him a cup of tea, for she saw the nurses’ league table on the wall, and when she had worked it out, felt an unusual, and, possibly Arab fit of much disapproval overtaking her. League table of proposals indeed! They were, she told herself, just a bunch of randy schoolgirls.
Mrs Wynne-Gurr appeared on one of her rounds just before lunchtime.
‘A very profitable morning!’ she said with satisfaction. ‘I have learned a lot.’
So had Chantale; and two of the things she had learned were, first, that she would never make a nurse, and, secondly, that the idea of securing her passage by enrolling in the St John Ambulance had been a dreadful mistake.
Seymour had somehow, typically, oiled his way through the hospital’s defences and secured permission to take her out for a quick lunch. Her spirits rose but then fell again when it became apparent that what was envisaged was a brief sandwich in a bar. Blasted away by Chantale’s fury, Seymour had hastily proposed that they make up for it by a really good Mediterranean meal that evening. ‘Paella,’ he had suggested temptingly. ‘Or maybe a good mullet.’ Since Chantale had tasted neither of them since she had been in England, she was prepared to make concessions; and in the end they had eaten a sandwich lunch sitting on a sea-wall looking out over the harbour. Where they could see the ships, said Seymour.
Chantale pointed out that they were all warships. ‘How typically British!’ she said. ‘Well, they’ve got to go somewhere,’ said Seymour. But Chantale, sensitive to expressions of imperial power, whether British or French, felt uncomfortable. Maybe it had been a mistake coming to Malta.
Her spirits were slightly cheered by a
dghajsa
passing near them on its way across the harbour to Valletta. The eyes painted on its bow seemed to be watching them as it passed but she didn’t mind them, they were cheerful eyes, seeming almost to wink as they went by.
‘Why don’t the British paint eyes on their warships?’ she asked Seymour.
‘They can see all right without them, I suppose,’ said Seymour.
‘They make the boats more human,’ said Chantale.
However, this encounter with the human had cheered her up and she began to tell him about her morning. She told him about the girl in the cupboard and cheered up still more when he didn’t believe her.
And then she told him about Mr Vasco.
‘What the nurses have to put up with!’
‘Yes. I’ve come across him myself,’ he said. He was interested, however, in what she told him about Vasco’s ambivalence over her being an Arab.
‘Another one with crazy, mixed-up ideas about the Arabs!’ she said.
‘I can understand it,’ he said. ‘With the Arabs being so close. You wouldn’t know whether to be for them or against them.’ Chantale, half Moroccan, half French, found that position entirely understandable.
Seymour thought he should follow up Chantale’s tale of the girl in the cupboard. He found the cupboard but, alas, no girl inside it. There were, however, signs of occupation. A mattress was there, leaning against the wall; and evidence suggested that it had not been used just for sleeping. He asked the nurse in the ward about it.
‘Oh, it’s just used for storing,’ she said, and looked him straight in the face as if defying him to advance any other hypothesis.
Coming out of the ward he ran into the three sailors, Cooper, Corke and Price, whose account of what they had seen, or half seen, in the ward has sparked off such a furore in the newspapers.
They were just going in.
‘Now, what brings you here?’ he said.
‘Just visiting,’ said Cooper.
‘Your mate, of course, is no longer here.’
‘We’ve got other mates,’ said Corke in a slightly hostile tone.
‘We like to visit the sick,’ said Cooper unctuously. ‘It’s a sort of errand of mercy.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Seymour sceptically.
‘No, really!’ Cooper insisted. ‘There are a lot of our boys in here, and we like to come round once or twice a week to cheer them up.’
‘Give them someone to talk to,’ said Price.
‘So it wasn’t just Turner you came to see?’
‘No, no. We like to do the rounds.’
‘We’re like that,’ said Cooper.
‘But Turner was a special mate of yours?’
‘Yes. Yes, you could say that.’
‘You were with him when he got injured, weren’t you? Or, at least,’ he said, turning to Price, ‘you were.’
‘We all were.’
‘In the bar?’
‘Yes. Just having a peaceful drink—after the match.’
‘You had been to see a match, had you?’
‘Yes, we like to see a match. They have them in the evenings here, when it not so hot.’
‘And then you went on to the bar?’
‘For a peaceful drink,’ Cooper insisted.
‘So how was it that they didn’t get to be so peaceful?’
‘A bunch of Maltese came in. Well, it was all right at first. They were on one side of the room, we were on the other. Just talking normally, like.’
‘So how did it start?’
‘Someone must have said something.’
‘One of
them
said something,’ said Cooper.
‘After the match?’
‘Well, no,’ said Price. ‘That’s what I couldn’t understand. If it had been, I mean, well, you might have understood it. But it wasn’t that.’
‘Some of them hadn’t even been to the match.’
‘And then one of them said something?’
‘Yes. It was that little bloke,’ Price said to the others. ‘He came in after the others and seemed to have something against Terry, because he just stood there looking at him.’
‘I didn’t see him,’ said Cooper.
‘Well, no, you wouldn’t have,’ said Price, ‘because he was sort of standing to one side. My side. And I saw him staring at Terry, and I thought: Hello, is he a long-lost friend? But he didn’t look that friendly. And then he said something to the others, and one of them said something, to poor old Bob, I think it was. And then Bob said something, replied, as it were. And then the next moment someone had hit him!’
‘Them was the aggressors,’ said Cooper.
‘I don’t think he hit him that hard. Just a tap, really. But Bob was off balance and went down. And, of course, once you’re on the floor anything can happen.’
‘Boots!’ said Corke briefly.
‘Well, we weren’t having that,’ said Cooper. ‘Not to our mate!’
‘And the next moment it was a sort of free-for-all!’ said Corke.
‘You’ve no idea why he took against you?’ Seymour asked Cooper.
‘No.’
‘Come across him before?’
‘Never seen him before in my life.’
‘Once it had started, I lost sight of him,’ said Price. ‘Just disappeared!’
‘Ran off, I think,’ said Corke.
‘Having started it!’ said Cooper.
‘Didn’t see him again,’ said Price.
‘And then the police came,’ said Corke.
‘And then our very own little blue-eyed boys!’ said Cooper. ‘And beat the hell out of us. They shoved us on to their boat—they’ve got a special boat, you see, for the likes of us. And they were pushing us on board, when one of them sees Bob. “He looks in a bad way!” he said. “Sick bay for him!” “Hadn’t we better get him to the hospital?” another of them says. “It’s just round the corner.” Well, I thought this was our chance. “Let us take him,” I says. “Me and my mates. We were nothing to do with all this,” I said, “and we knows the hospital.” “You were nothing to do with it?” says the Petty Officer. “You boys bloody started it!”
‘Well, there was a bit of an argument at that point, but then someone shouted: “There’s trouble at Antonio’s!” and they thought they’d better get there. So they said we could take poor Bob to the hospital, and if they had any more trouble from us that night, they’d kick the hell out of us. So we went.’
They passed on into the ward and when he looked in a little later Seymour saw them assiduously going round the beds chatting to their incumbents.
‘Quite touching, really,’ said Sister Chisholm. ‘They come every week, twice or three times a week, and go round religiously to everybody. And not just this ward! They usually look in on Macfarlane’s ward. They’ve got mates there, too. I don’t mind them coming round, they bring a bit of life into the place. Of course, you’ve got to keep an eye on them. God knows what they’d get up to if you didn’t! Although, as a matter of fact, I do know what they’d get up to; they’d never leave the nurses alone. So I always make a point of being here when they visit, and that keeps things decent. I suppose I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for them. I’ve known them for a long time. They were out on the Singapore station with me.’
‘The Singapore station?’ said Seymour. ‘Ah, you must have been there when—’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Sister Chisholm, ‘when Cooper was in hospital there and witnessed, or heard about, the famous snoring incident. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that story is an old chestnut which regularly makes the rounds every time a new ship comes in. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now. But everyone in the Navy takes it for Gospel.’
‘And this,’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr, ‘is where it all began. Where
we
began.’
The ladies were impressed.
‘The headquarters of the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, the Grand Master’s Palace.’
‘Actually, this is not, strictly speaking, where they began,’ said Felix, tagging along for once, with some interest. ‘They started in Jerusalem.’
‘Thank you, Felix—’
‘And then they moved to Rhodes.’
‘Yes, well, thank you, Felix—’
‘The Palace wasn’t started till 1520. But the Order had been set up in 1085.’
‘If I may continue,’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr resolutely, ‘when the Order was first established
on the island of Malta
, this was its headquarters. It is, as you see, a very grand building, and even grander inside. The principal apartments are on the first floor, the
piano nobile
as it is called. They are built around the courtyard and include the Council Chamber and the Supreme Council Hall—’
‘And the Armouries,’ said Felix, ‘although they’re at the back.’
‘I do recommend you, while you are here, to find an hour in your busy schedule to visit them.’
‘You won’t be able to get into the Armouries,’ said Felix. ‘They’re closed.’
‘I don’t expect you’ll be wanting to visit
them
,’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr crushingly. ‘As I say, the Grand Master’s Apartments are worth a visit. However, the main focus of your interest will be the Sacra Infermeria, the Holy Infirmary, which was, at the time it was built, in 1574, the most modern hospital in Europe. And the largest, with over five hundred beds.’
‘Five hundred and sixty-three,’ said Felix, ‘which could be increased to nine hundred and fourteen. Dr Malia says that this is very important.’
‘Yes, well—’
‘Most of them would be in the Long Hall.’
‘Which we shall go and visit now. If you would follow me—’
‘Five hundred and eight feet,’ said Felix. ‘The longest room in Europe.’
‘Thank you, Felix.’
‘Do you know, they used to boil their surgical instruments?’
‘Did they? Well, that was very advanced of them—’
‘Oh, they weren’t doing it to sterilize them. Dr Malia says they thought it would reduce the pain. But it would have helped, wouldn’t it? I mean, it would have cut down the numbers dying.’
‘I expect so, Felix. Now—’
‘They were fed off silver dishes.’
‘Really?’
‘Sophia says, though, that when the French were on the island they seized all the silver and melted it down so that they could pay for Napoleon’s wars.’
‘Well, there you are. That’s the French for you.’
‘Fed off silver?’ said one of the ladies. ‘Everybody?’
‘I think so,’ said Felix. ‘Though maybe not the lunatics.’
‘Lunatics?’
‘Lunatics and galley slaves were treated on the first floor.’
‘But they
were
treated?’ said the lady who had spoken before. ‘Well, I consider that very enlightened.’
‘Yes, but Sophia says that the structure of the organization reflects the class-ridden society of the time. Slaves at the bottom, knights at the top.’
‘Felix,’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr, ‘would you like to go off on your own somewhere? You’ve been over the Infermeria several times already and I’m sure you would like to give it a miss this time.’
‘Oh, no, Mum. I’d be very interested to see it again. You notice different things each time you go through it.’
Mrs Wynne-Gurr sighed.
Chantale, still tired from the journey from England, although hardly from the exertions of the day, fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow; but then, almost immediately after, or so it seemed to her, she was woken by an ear-splitting noise. At first, in her dazed state, she thought it was in the room with her, but then she realized it came from outside.
It sounded like a concert. Right under her window. But not exactly a concert. A performance, by a band of some sort. The instruments were mostly brass and the music was stirring. Martial, you could have said. It was a bit like the music the bands had been playing at the Marsa racetrack. It
was
the music the bands had been playing at the Marsa racetrack.
She looked out of the window. It was one of the bands, too. The band was parading up and down the street, not just under her window but under everybody else’s, too. Many of the inhabitants of the houses had come out to join in the fun. The street was packed with people. Not just grown-ups but children, too, who in England would have been in their beds hours before. Young, old, men, women—everyone was there!
Chantale soon realized that if you couldn’t beat them, the best thing was to join them. She threw on her clothes and some sandals and went downstairs. The front door was open and Mrs Ferreira was standing outside.
‘Our band!’ she said, turning a blissful face to Chantale. All her children were there, except, for some reason, Sophia. Even Mrs Ferreira’s father, that solid, slightly dour, man with his feet very much on the ground, was there. There, too, were many of the relatives she had seen, the uncles, the cousins and the aunts, not all from her house but from the houses round about, all excited and pressing around the band as it paraded up and down.
There was Paolo, with a young woman—Chantale stopped. It couldn’t be! But, yes, it was. She was sure. The woman he was with was the young woman she had come upon in the cupboard in the hospital. Her face was now not sleepy but animated. She was waving her arms and clapping her hands above her head, shouting excitedly to the band, possibly singing with it.
Paolo, too, without any instrument but beating time, was cheering the players on.
And definitely with the young woman she had seen in the cupboard. He had his arm around her and once, delighted by the rendering of a particular piece of music, she threw her arms about his neck.
But everyone was throwing their arms about each other, and jumping up in an attempt to see the band better, and waving rapturously.
‘Our band!’ said Sophia with pride, materializing suddenly.
‘What are they celebrating?’ asked Chantale.
‘Oh, they’re not celebrating anything in particular. They’ve just been rehearsing, and I suppose they got a bit carried away.’
She broke off to wave to someone.
‘Perhaps they
are
celebrating a little,’ she said. ‘Mrs Mumtaz has had a baby. And the Boys’ Under Fifteen has won a match. In fact, they’ve reached the semi-final.’
‘Do they always carry on like this?’
‘Always,’ declared Sophia.
She waved to someone else, a girl of about her age, but dressed in a different kind of school uniform.
‘I saw your Uncle Paolo,’ said Chantale.
‘Oh, yes? It’s not his band, but, of course, he knows lots of people in our street.’
‘He was with a girl.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Sophia.
‘He was. He had his arm around her.’
‘This would be a first!’ said Sophia.
‘That was not my impression,’ said Chantale.
‘No? Oh, well, things are looking up, then.’
‘That girl over there.’
‘Oh, that girl. Suzie. She doesn’t count.’
‘Why doesn’t she count?’
‘Well, he’s not going to marry her, is he? And from the point of view of my family, that’s all that counts.’
‘Why isn’t he going to marry her?’
Sophia laughed, but said nothing.
‘I saw her yesterday in the hospital.’
‘She works there. Sometimes.’
‘She’s not a nurse?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘An ancillary worker of some kind?’
Sophia laughed again. ‘You could call it that.’
‘Is she a … a prostitute?’
‘Not exactly. A lady whose virtue is particularly easy, my grandfather says. She sleeps around but she only goes with you if she likes you, and it’s not always for money. She’s just very casual. She works in the hospital laundry but she’s very casual about that, too, so much so that they got rid of her. But sometimes they need her when there’s a lot of work to be done and then they take her back. But she never stays long. She doesn’t like being tied down. A bit like Uncle Paolo, I suppose. Though he’s not really like that. Casual in that sense, I mean. He’s deadly serious except about marrying.’
The girl saw them looking at her and said something to Uncle Paolo. Then they worked their way through the crowd across to them.
‘You saw me, didn’t you? In the cupboard.’
‘Yes,’ said Chantale.
‘They never go in there so I use it sometimes.’
‘I saw you come out.’
‘You didn’t say anything, though, did you? I half expected that you would. In fact, I more than half expected it. I was sure you would give me away. So I put my clothes on pretty quickly. But then you didn’t.’
‘No.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Actually, I couldn’t think what I ought to do, so I did nothing.’
‘I wouldn’t do anything to hurt the hospital, you know. I work there. In the laundry. But sometimes I have had to stay on because there’s so much washing to be done. They make me do the sheets and sometimes I don’t finish them until quite late. It’s not worth me going home so I sometimes stay in the cupboard. Especially if I’ve been in there already.’
‘You oughtn’t to be doing that in there,’ said Paolo.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘Not regularly. And not with British sailors.’
‘They’re all right.’
‘Well, they’re not all right. There was that business with Luigi.’
‘They had nothing to do with it. Not with the stabbing.’
‘Not with the stabbing, no.’
‘Anyway, thanks again,’ said Suzie.
‘This lady is the one that bandaged Luigi up,’ said Paolo. ‘Did you?’ said Suzie, surprised. ‘Well, thanks for that, too. Luigi is my bloke. Some of the time.’
On his way to the hospital Seymour ran into Lucca.
‘Hello!’ he said. ‘How are things?’
‘Bad,’ said Lucca. ‘I’ve had a man from the German Consulate in with me all morning asking questions. About that German who died. He’s got to write a report. He went on and on and in the end I said: “Look, Herr Backhaus, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been up since five and on since six and I’ve hardly had a bite. So if it’s all right with you, I’m stopping for one right now!”
‘“It is a long time, perhaps,” he said grudgingly.
‘“It bloody is,” I said.
‘So we stopped and I had a beer and a sandwich. But he didn’t have anything. He just stood there watching me, waiting to get on with it. “How about you, Mr Backhaus?” I said. “Can I get you something?”
‘“Perhaps a glass of milk,” he said.
‘Milk is not what I would go for in Malta. Or, indeed, anywhere. But if that was what he wanted, he could have it. So I got him one.
‘But then I thought: look, I don’t mind standing anyone a beer, but this is not like that. This is an expense incurred in the line of duty. So when I got back I banged it in as expenses. And the bloke in the office looks at me and says: “Are you having me on, Lucca? A glass of milk?” “It was for him!” I say. He purses his lips, cold, accountant lips, and says: “Are you sure, Lucca? Are you sure you’re not trying to take the piss out of me?”
‘And he bloody disallowed it!’
‘Suzie?’ said Sister Chisholm. ‘She works in the laundry.’
‘Not just the laundry,’ said Seymour.
Sister Chisholm was silent for a moment. Then she sighed.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘Here, for instance.’
‘Not here,’ said Sister Chisholm. ‘Not actually in the wards.’
‘Where, then?’
‘In a place like this there are lots of odd corners. And Suzie would know them all. She’s been here a long time. In fact, you could say she grew up here.’
‘Grew up here?’
‘In a manner of speaking. She was born here. And then she sort of stayed. She’s been here so long that she’s part of the place. Part of the shipboard fittings, as they call it. That’s how she began. As the result of a shipboard fitting. Her mother was a cleaner in the hospital, her father—well, a passing seaman, I suppose. He passed, and she was left with the baby.
‘Of course, they all knew about it. Both the hospital staff and the seamen. But they were very good. About it and to her. The sailors, I mean. They gave her money, enough to live on, and the hospital was reasonable, too. It kept her on as a cleaner.
‘Well, the baby grew up, and the seamen remembered and used to ask after her. They brought her presents, toys when she was small, then perfume and things like that. Money, sometimes. They looked her up when they were in port. She grew up thinking she was part of the Navy. And that was how they saw her, too, as part of the Navy. They still looked out for her. Only, as she grew up, they looked out a bit too well and she became a shipboard fitting.
‘That’s how it was when I got here. She was part of the furniture I inherited. I received strict instructions from my predecessor to keep her up to date on birth control and to check regularly that she kept free from disease.
‘Well, there you have it. You could say we condone her plying her trade. Only no one sees it as that, and I don’t think she does. No money passes—she insists on that. They’re nice to her and she’s nice to them, that’s how she sees it. But they still make a donation on her behalf every time they get into port. Sometimes they give it to Laura. “For Shipboard Fittings,” they say. I think that a lot of them, especially the new ones, don’t know what it means. And I’m not entirely sure that Laura does, either.’
‘I thought you’d come looking for me sooner or later,’ said Suzie.
‘Yes,’ said Seymour.
‘That girlfriend of yours, the Arab one, she saw me, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘She didn’t do anything about it. I thought she might.’
‘She told me.’
‘Well, I thought she would once I realized that you were together. But when she didn’t do anything about it, I rather hoped that you wouldn’t, either.’
‘I still might not.’
‘Depending on what?’
‘Depending on what you tell me now.’
Suzie nodded.
‘What do you want to know?’ she said, after a moment. ‘You know why I’m in Malta, don’t you?’
