Page 45 of Never Tear Us Apart
I hurry to greet her. ‘Hello!’
‘Oh,thereyou are.’ Christina greets me. She looks beautiful in a light cotton blouse and long, wide-legged trousers that gape at the waist. ‘I’m on my way to work, but I just had to drop by. Last night, Alex had a perfect brainstorm! He remembered our old landlady’s cotton sheets down in the basement – bright yellow, don’t you know? We’d thought about running something up with them before, only yellow makes me sallow and Alex says he’d rather die than be compared to custard. But then we thought of you, with your complexion – when it’s not red – and your dark hair. You can carry it off very well. So, he stitched you a frock in double time, and I’m delivering. I had him put pockets in it. A woman needs pockets in time of war, darling.’ She thrusts her hands into her own, as if to make a point. ‘And so much better in this heat than what you’ve got on.’ She notices that I’m still in the same altered outfit I left her house in the day before yesterday. ‘And now you have a change of clothes, though I’m not sure what we are going to do with your hair. None of my setting lasted on that mop.’
‘I quite like it as it is,’ I tell her, touching my hand to where my hair has sprung back into its natural curls, sitting lightly on the nape of my neck. ‘Easy to care for.’
‘It does rather suit you, I suppose, in a sort of rural way,’ Christina says. ‘Well, come on then. I want to see how it looks.’
She presents a neatly folded garment to me, which I take with delight, shaking it out so that I can hold it up against me. A simple cotton shirt-dress, darted at the bust and gathered at the waist – and after being stuck in this uncomfortable skirt and blouse, it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
‘Well, go on!’ Christina urges me. ‘Put it on. No need for modesty – it’s only you and me. It’s stitched in blue thread, because that’s the only colour we had to hand, but I think it’s rather nice. See how Alex made a feature of it on the collar and buttonholes?’
‘It must have taken him hours,’ I exclaim as I strip off. ‘How will I repay him?’
‘Not hours – he’s a whizz. Wants to go to Paris after the war. If there stillisa Paris, that is. And you know, it takes his mind off things. It’s not easy for Alex, being two people at once. What a stupid world we live in, when a man isn’t supposed to love another man, but war and power and violence is something to be proud of.’
‘I hear you,’ I say.
Christina cocks her head. ‘Well, of course you do, darling, I’m standing right next to you. I say, your brassiere is marvellous.’ She leans in to peer at my M&S plunge underwire. ‘All that cleavage with no corset. I used to have breasts once, you know? Nothing like your ample bosom, but perfectly respectable. Of course, since rations, they’ve gone the way of my shapely behind.’
‘They’ll come back one day,’ I tell her.
‘Perhaps, darling, but being dreadfully thin never goes out of fashion.’
Hastily, I button up the dress. There are ten white buttons – no two are matching, but they are all of almost equal size. And it fits perfectly.
Christina holds a fragment of broken mirror for me to look at myself in, moving it up and down so I can get the full effect.
‘This is so kind,’ I tell her. ‘I must do something to return the favour.’
‘I am sure we will think of something,’ Christina tells me with a laugh. ‘Actually, you know, we need another plotter at Lascaris. One of the local girls has gone down with “Malta dog” dysentery, darling, and we have no backup at all. And as you are at a bit of a loose end, perhaps you could apply?’
‘Oh, I’ve just started working for Miss Strickland,’ I tell her. ‘Words are my thing. I have all the hand-eye co-ordination of a rock.’
‘Well! That is a good way of supporting the war effort, I suppose. We all need the morale boost of theTimesevery day.’ Christina observes me with her grey eyes. There are a dozen questions there that she wants to ask me, and yet for some reason, she refrains.
‘Christina . . .’ I begin.
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I know there’s something mysterious about you, Maia Borg, but I also know that whatever it is, you aren’t here to spy on us. If you are, then everything I thought I’d learnt from a lifetime in music halls is wrong. I trust you. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it, and it makes no sense, but from the first moment I set eyes on you, I felt as if we had always known each other and that you were my friend.’
‘I feel that, too,’ I say.
‘So, don’t tell me anything. But if it turns out that I’m a deluded fool and I’m wrong about you, then it won’t be the military police you have to fear. I’ll put you up against a wall and shoot you myself.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ I tell her.
‘It had bloody well better not. Well, I’m late, so I’d better run.’ She kisses me lightly on each cheek. ‘Ciao!’
It seems to me that, if nothing is real, then nothing is a lie and nothing is true either. And yet I have met very few people as palpably alive as Christina Ratcliffe, and not to tell her everything feels like a betrayal. So, I promise myself – and her – that one day I will try to explain this impossible thing. When the time is right. One day, I’ll tell the truth to everyone who matters. It won’t matter if they believe me, just as long as I have stayed true.
Chapter Thirty-One
The gate of the catacombs is locked with a thick chain and heavy padlock. I stand for a moment in the long, dry grass and hot afternoon sun, staring at it, trying to work out what to do next. I didn’t account for this.
Then I hear a short, sharp hiss.
Looking towards the sound, I see a small boy wearing a cap several sizes too big for his head, peering through the railings. Glancing around, he beckons furtively.
‘Hello?’
