Page 11 of Never Tear Us Apart
Chapter Seven
Insistent pain wakes me once more, slicing down through my temple in a throbbing, repetitive slash, prodding its way into my fractured dreams. A white room filled with bright light. A sensation of floating and comfort.
Touching my hand to my forehead, I feel thick cotton bandages tightly wrapped. A safety pin holds the dressing in place. Did the cut get worse in the night?
‘Bet you feel pretty terrible.’ A cut-glass English female voice.
It takes me a few attempts at blinking to unpeel my lashes, then another moment or two more for my sore and swollen eyes to focus. A slender, light-haired young woman is standing over me, her head tilted slightly to one side. I have a blurred impression of a curious songbird.
‘Why the bandage?’ I ask. My mouth is dry.
She pours me a glass of water from a tin jug and helps me sit up, supporting the small of my back as she lifts the glass to my lips. The water tastes metallic, but it refreshes my bone-dry mouth and throat. This nurse – if that’s what she is – smells of old-fashioned soap, lavender, and lily of the valley, just like my nan used to.
‘You were knocked out by a bit of flying rubble,’ the woman tells me matter-of-factly, peering at my bandage. ‘At least, that’s my best guess. Not shrapnel, thank God. That likely would have seen you off. You’ll have concussion, but you’ll live – though you will have a scar, I’mafraid. Shouldn’t think it will scare off prospective husbands – not if you style your hair over it.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I ask, noticing the raw scrapes on my arms. ‘Flying rubble? Shrapnel? I fainted and hit my head.’
‘I think you are in rather a muddle, dear,’ she says kindly. ‘You were in the Vittoriosa public shelter when you had something of a moment and decided to run outside before the all-clear, the boss’s son in tow. Good job nothing happened to him. If it had, I’m not sure you would have made it through the night.’
Is this a dream, or something else? The room flexes and morphs into another place, a place made of glass and white tiles, where a vase of cut flowers sits in the window. Each flowering of reality blooms and dissipates into another until finally the walls settle, the floor rises to meet the feet of the bed and this shabby, hot room solidifies around me, bringing every scent and sound with it.
My nurse sits on the edge of the bed and takes my hands. Hers are cool and smooth. ‘Look, we have all had to develop nerves of steel here. But really, putting others at risk with your own silliness is not the done thing – not the done thing at all. You need to screw your courage to the sticking place, as Lady M would say. Can you do that?’
‘It’s normally my thing,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t know what happened.’
‘Well, never mind. All’s well that ends well. I say, I am being Shakespearean today! Now, who do you belong to?’
‘I don’t have a husband,’ I say, trying to make sense of who I am in this world my brain has created. ‘I have a cousin. I’m staying with my cousin.’
‘And who is your cousin? You didn’t have any papers on you. Nothing at all. And some people might find that rathertroubling. After all, it’s not long ago that we had all that bother with the spy.’
‘The spy?’ I frown. Frowning hurts. ‘What about my cousin? She knows me.’
‘There’s no cousin come to check on you.’ Her face softens. ‘You seem to be quite alone. Don’t worry – we’ll get to the bottom of all this. In the meantime, I expect you have rather a terrible headache. We are short of supplies, but take some aspirin, and I’ll see if I can find you some penicillin. Wouldn’t do to have you die of an infection after Danny did such a sterling job of saving your life.’
‘Danny?’ I ask, taking another sip of water.
‘Danny Beauchamp, the pilot who saved your life? It was him who knocked you clear out of the path of that aeroplane. Quite a few of the young ladies on the island would have been pleased to be in your position, I can tell you, even accounting for the brush with death.’ She chuckles. ‘If I wasn’t already spoken for . . .’
A vague impression returns of a tall man in unform with an American accent. Why him? I can make sense of where much of this wartime narrative comes from, but there has never been a handsome rescuer of any description in my life. I’ve always had to rescue myself, even when I’ve thought of just letting go and losing myself to oblivion. In those moments, I think of Mum and how she would never forgive me.
I catch the woman studying me closely, trying to interpret my thoughts.
‘Anyway, where are my manners?’ She offers a bright smile. ‘I’m Christina Ratcliffe. You may call me Christina. I am volunteering here at the Floriana medical inspection room today. It’s Vittoria, the usual helper’s, day off. I used to be a dancer, and now I’m a plotter. But when my Warby’saway – he’s a pilot, too – I like to keep busy, so I help here, too. Better than dwelling on things, don’t you think? Anyway, that’s where you are: Floriana. The doctor doesn’t usually keep patients overnight here, but we thought we’d better hang onto you as you refused to wake up and no one came to claim you.’
‘I’m in wartime Malta,’ I reflect.
‘Yes,’ Christina says, rather perplexed. ‘Of course you are.’
‘What’s . . . the date?’ I make myself ask.
‘August 1942, of course – I forget the day. They all rather run into one another these days, don’t they? Dear me, how hard did you hit your head? In any event, the Germans and Italians are trying very hard to kill us, and we are trying very hard to kill them. One wonders what the point of it all is. I just hope someone knows.’
‘August?’ I latch onto the single word, unable to process the ‘1942’ she said after it. ‘That’s interesting.’
She doesn’t appear to hear me. ‘It’s hellishly hot, desperately dangerous, and we are all starving to death. Certainly never a dull moment!’
I study her face, blinking in the bright light. Christina is young, perhaps in her late twenties, and very pretty, even though she looks like she hasn’t slept properly in an age. Her face is thin and gaunt, her wrists frail and bony. Even so, she’s smartly dressed in a skirt and blouse, though both are showing signs of wear and seem to have once belonged to someone who carried quite a few more pounds than Christina. Her skirt is secured at the waist with a safety pin just like the one holding my bandage in place, and there are empty pockets of air in the tailored shirt that was made to fit neatly over a fuller bust. She wasn’t exaggerating when she said she’s starving.
