Medusa (21 page)

I heard the watch change and the muffled beat of the engines starting up, felt the change of movement. We were under way again and after that I slept until Carp gave me a shake just after 03.00. ‘Gozo just coming abeam,' he reported, ‘and I can now see the light on the St Elmo breakwater.'

It was a bright, starlit morning, the dark sprawl of Gozo clearly visible under the swinging beam of the lighthouse high up in the centre of the island. I was alone at the wheel then, virtually no wind and the engines purring us along
at eight knots, dawn gradually filling in the details of the landscape on our starb'd hand. I could make out the hotel I had once stayed in at St Paul's Bay, which is the spot where the disciple is supposed to have been shipwrecked. So many places I remember, and when the sun came up in a ball of fire the honey-coloured buildings of Sliema and Valetta took on a rosy glow, the whole urban complex that surrounds the great harbour inlets of Marsamxett and Grand Harbour looking fresh as the phoenix still engulfed in flames.

I steered close under the old fortress of St Elmo, heading for Gallows Point, and when I turned into Grand Harbour itself, I called Luis and Carp to come up and see it, neither of them having been to Malta before. To come in like this, from the sea, is to see it as the Turks saw it in May 1565, as all one hundred and ninety of their ships passed slowly across the entrance to bring the greatest fighting force then in existence to attack the Knights of St John in the stronghold they had retired to after being driven out of Rhodes.

We hoisted the yellow Q flag, and heading up the harbour, there on the port hand was Kalkara Creek and the massive ramparts of St Angelo and Senglea either side of Dockyard Creek. And right in front of us, bang in the middle of Grand Harbour and looking as though it owned the place, was the solid grey armour of a cruiser flying a red ensign with hammer and sickle on it. How many British admirals, I wondered, had turned in their graves at the thought of all the other nations that now used
their
harbour? There was a Libyan freighter at the quay further in, a small Cuban warship moored off, and a gaggle of coastal patrol vessels among the ferryboats in the creek. And then I caught sight of a pale grey shape, awkwardly placed right behind the Libyan freighter and tucked in against the dockyard quay right under one of the cranes. It looked like a Royal Navy ship. A gaily pinted
dghajsa
was being rowed across our bows, the man at the oars
calling to ask us if we wished to be taken ashore. But by then one of the harbour launches was coming out to meet us.

Things had been difficult enough during the Mintoff era, which is why we had only been back twice since our marriage, but now the bureaucracy, as represented by the puffed-up little immigration officer who came out to us, seemed to have become even more rigid and uncooperative. No doubt he had his orders, for as soon as I said my name he demanded to see my passport, and when I told him I had lost it overboard, he nodded, smiling, as though that was what he had expected.

I had been hoping, of course, that by now Martin Lopez would have had time to straighten things out, but when he ordered us to move nearer the dockyard area, presumably so that they could keep a closer watch on us, and said that nobody was to land, it was obvious the Menorcan authorities had been in touch with them. I pointed out to him that we had been at sea for almost four days and must send somebody ashore for fresh food, but the brown eyes in the smooth dark face stared at me uncomprehendingly. In the end he told us to arrange with one of the
dghajsas
to supply our needs. ‘If you go ashore before you have clearance,' he said, ‘you will be arrested.'

I was too tired to argue with him and shortly after he had left a Harbour Police launch appeared and under their direction we shifted to the industrial part of the harbour, anchoring just north of the largest of the dry docks, which was occupied by a Panamanian-registered cruise ship. Our new anchorage was noisy and smelt strongly of oil and sewage, the water thick and dark, the viscidity of its surface gleaming with a bluebottle iridescence in the bright sunlight.

The RN ship was a frigate; we could see her quite clearly now, but not her name, only the number on her side prefixed F. She was berthed alongside a quay on the Senglea shore of French Creek at about the spot where the Turks had tried so desperately to tear down the improvised palisade the Knights had erected to protect their southern flank. Maltese swimmers, armed with knives and short swords, had driven them off, and then on July 15, in the full heat of summer, Mustapha Pasha had launched what was intended as a final crushing blow against the Knights of St John. I remember the date because it was the day Soo and I had been married. The Janissaries, the Spahis, the Iayalars, the Levies were all thrown in, the galleys as well that had been dragged overland from Marsamxett. Three thousand fanatical Muslims died that day.

How much had changed! Yet over the long gap of four centuries, the forts, ramparts and ravelins of the Knights still stood massive in the sunshine – Senglea and St Michael, Birgu and St Angelo, and Fort St Elmo away to my left on the Valetta side of Grand Harbour. I had been reading up on the Great Siege when I first met Soo and it was she who had taken me to all sorts of places I would otherwise have missed. It was, in fact, the Great Siege that had brought us together, the beginning of our love, and seeing it again all bright on that cloudless morning brought a lump to my throat.

A sudden flurry of activity on the deck of the frigate brought my mind back from the past. The gangway staff had been alerted by the approach of a launch speeding across from Valetta. I watched as it came alongside the accommodation ladder, sailors with boathooks fore and aft and a naval officer stepping out and climbing quickly to the deck above. There was a twitter of bo's'n's pipes and I wondered if it was the Captain returning from a courtesy visit. Was it Lloyd Jones? Would he know about the Great Siege? Would that spark I had seen explode between them compensate for all the things Soo and I had shared? And
then, more practically, I was looking at the frigate's superstructure, the tangle of radio and radar equipment. There, if the worst came to the worst, was the means of communicating with the outside world, if he would play.

That thought stayed in my mind all day. I needed to know what was happening back in Mahon, what my position was. I had been so convinced I would be in the clear by the time we reached Malta, and Evans? … surely they would have searched the villa by now? Lying in the broad double bunk in the port hull my mind went over and over the stupidity of it all. To fall into such a heavily baited trap – me, with all the experience I had of sailing close to the wind – Christ! It was unbelievable.

And then, when I finally got off to sleep, there was the jar of a launch alongside, Maltese voices and the thump of feet on deck. It was the customs back again, this time with orders to search the boat, which they did from end to end, peering into all the bilges, prodding cushions and bedding and searching every locker, the engine compartments, too. Periodically I asked them what they were looking for, but each time the senior officer replied, ‘A routine search. Nothing more. Just routine.'

They were on board the better part of two hours. When they left I was advised once again not to go ashore. ‘And don't send any bags, laundry, anything like that ashore. You wait here until you are cleared, okay?'

Nothing is more demoralising than being confined on board a sailing boat in port and at anchor, nothing to do but wait, and so many things I could have been doing ashore. Carp retired philosophically to his bunk, but though I followed his example, I couldn't sleep. After lunch I got the inflatable into the water and the outboard fixed to its bracket in readiness. If I had been on my own I think I would have risked it, but I had Carp to consider and so I sat there in the helmsman's chair watching the world go by, the sun hot on my bare shoulders, a drink in my hand and the sounds of Malta at work all about me.

Nobody else came out to us and time passed slowly. The flamboyantly painted
dghajsas
and ferries full of tourists scurried to and fro across the water between Valetta and Kalkara or Vittoriosa, and there were launches and service craft constantly moving among the vessels at anchor. Just before five the launch lying alongside the frigate's gangway was manned again and an officer appeared on the deck above. I got the glasses, but I couldn't be sure it was Lloyd Jones, the peak of his cap casting a shadow across his face. He was taken across the harbour to land by the Customs House where a car was waiting for him. Inside of an hour he was back on board. By then the sun was sinking over the Marsa township and the honey-coloured limestone of the older buildings ashore began to glow with a warmth that turned rapidly from gold to a fiery red.

By then the shipyard noises had been briefly swamped by the engines and horns of the rush-hour traffic. Lights appeared in the streets and on the wharfs, the windows of buildings blazed like a myriad fireflies, and suddenly the frigate was lit from end to end, a circlet of electric light bulbs. I think it was this that finally made up my mind for me. I went below, changed into a decent pair of trousers, put on a shirt and tie, then asked Carp to run me over to the frigate.

He looked at me hard for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Okay, if that's what you want. You can always say it doesn't count – as going ashore, I mean.'

It took us less than five minutes to cross the flat calm strip of water that separated us from the frigate. The launch had been hoisted into its davits so that, once I had checked that Lloyd Jones was the frigate's captain and the Quartermaster had satisfied himself I really did know him, we were able to go straight alongside the accommodation ladder. ‘Want me to wait for you?' Carp asked as I seized one of the stanchions and swung myself up on to the grating.

‘No.' I didn't want it made that easy for them to get rid
of me. ‘Either they'll bring me back or I'll have them flash you up on their signal lamp.'

By the time I reached the frigate's deck Carp was already on his way back to the boat and a very young-looking officer was waiting for me. He confirmed that Lloyd Jones was the Captain and when I told him I was a friend, he asked me to wait while he phoned. He came back almost immediately with Gareth Lloyd Jones. He looked very smart in an open-necked shirt, immaculately white, black trousers and cummerbund, and the gold of his new rank bright on his shoulder boards, a smile on that pleasant open face of his. ‘Mike. It's good to see you.' He held out his hand, seeming genuinely pleased. ‘John, take Mr Steele up to my cabin,' he told the young officer, ‘and have Petty Officer Jarvis get him a drink.' Then to me he said, ‘You'll excuse me for a moment. There's a party going ashore for supper at the invitation of a Maltese wine company and I want to have a word with them before they leave.'

He left me then, climbing the ladder to the helicopter flight deck ahead of me and disappearing round the hangar on the port side. John Kent, a dark-haired, dark-browed young man, who proved to be one of the seamen officers, led the way for me, up to the flight deck, for'ard past the illuminated funnel and in through a watertight door to a passageway that led across to the curtained entrance to the Commanding Officer's day cabin. ‘Make yourself at home, sir, while I find the Captain's steward.'

The cabin was a roomy one with a desk, two armchairs and a couch with a coffee table in front of it, and there was a small dining table by one of the two portholes with utilitarian upright chairs. The portholes, which had grips for steel shuttering, gave me a view of the concrete wall at the back of the quay and the lit buildings behind it rising to the back of the Senglea peninsula. There was nobody on the wharf or at the end of the shore-side gangway, which I could just see a short distance aft of where I was standing. The only sounds that penetrated the cabin
were shipboard sounds of whirring machinery and air-conditioning.

On the wall by the desk there was a telephone communications system, also a microphone and loudspeaker, and on the desk itself there was a naval manual of some sort, a Folio Society edition of Fitzroy's
Voyage of HMS Beagle
, a paperback copy of one of Patrick O'Brian's sea stories, also a framed photograph of Soo sunbathing on a rock. It looked like a picture I had taken myself, at Cala d'Alcaufar when we had first come to Menorca. It was a shock to have this visual evidence of how much my wife now meant to this man living a monastic existence on one of Her Majesty's ships.

‘What would you care to drink, sir?'

I turned with a start to find a round-faced young man in dark blue, almost black, Navy trousers, and white shirt gazing at me curiously from the doorway. I ordered a gin and tonic and moved back to the porthole. There was movement now, a steady stream of sailors, all in civvies, looking clean and smart with their hair well brushed, moving down the gangway on to the wharf. I counted twenty-seven of them as they walked briskly across the wharf, separating into little groups as they disappeared from view round the corner of a storage shed. A moment later Gareth Lloyd Jones came in. ‘Nobody offered you a drink?'

‘Yes, it's coming,' I said.

Now that I had a chance to examine him more closely I thought he looked tired and edgy, as though his new command was getting him down.

The steward came in with two large gins on ice and a bottle of tonic. ‘Fifty-fifty, plenty of tonic?' Gareth gave me a quick grin, poured the tonic, then took a long pull at his own drink before subsiding on to the couch. ‘Well, what brings you here? That's your catamaran over by the dry dock, is it?' He must have caught sight of Soo's photograph then, for he suddenly bounced up, went over
to the desk, and under the pretext of looking at some papers, turned the picture face down.

Briefly I explained what had happened, finally asking him whether there was any way he could find out what the attitude of the authorities in Menorca was to me now. ‘Have you anyone there you can contact by radio?'