Page 58 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘Maia. Awake – good. I was worried. You were in a dead faint and not coming round, not even with smelling salts. It is concerning.’
‘It’s fine,’ I tell her. ‘Normal for me. I didn’t want to waste your time, so I made Vittoria promise to get me back to Sal.’
‘Yes.’ Her expression is tight. ‘She was insistent, despite my direct orders to the contrary.’ A hint of a smile twitches her mouth. ‘I’ll be honest – I didn’t think she had it in her. Perhaps she will be a nurse one day after all.’
‘You’ll still train her?’
‘Of course.’ Now she seems rather offended. ‘But these dead faints – they are not normal, not for you or anyone. Come to the medical room. Let me check your blood pressure at least.’
‘I will,’ I agree readily, hoping to see another hint of her elusive smile before she goes, but it doesn’t return.
‘Good.’ She nods at Sal, walking into the room where I imagine my counterfeit papers are being examined under a spotlight. She doesn’t even knock.
A moment later, the superior woman re-emerges.
‘Thank you, Maia. Your papers are in order.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, taking them and getting ready to go.
‘You are also English?’
‘Yes,’ I say, glancing at Sal.
‘Your papers say you were born in Malta, but your accent . . . ?’
‘Oh, my father was Maltese,’ I say, ‘and I was born here, but after he died, my mother moved back to England. I grew up there, living with Mother until just before the war, when I came to stay with my aunt.’
I hope I’ve got that right. I don’t dare look at Sal in case I’ve missed anything.
The woman holds my gaze for a long second. ‘I see . . .’
‘You people!’ The doctor opens the door, her attention still turned into the room. ‘You think I can magic medicines and supplies from thin air? That I can make what little we have go any further? General, we treat your pilots with the greatest care and respect, and in return, you let our people suffer and die.Youshould be ashamed.’
She walks out, her eyes flashing. ‘You, why are you standing over my patient?’ she asks the superior woman. ‘Is she not sick enough for you? Would you like to injure her more with your haughty stare? Or perhaps you can find something that is of actual use to do?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ the woman asks, wonderfully affronted.
‘Come,’ the doctor tells me. ‘We are leaving.’
Without another word, Sal and I follow in her wake, as she mutters furiously under her breath.
‘Thank you, Doctor . . .’ I offer as I follow her.
‘I swear,’ she says as we come out of the building into the full force of the August heat. ‘The English – if they could, they would have let this island burn. Do they defend us because it is the right thing to do? No, but because they need to win something, somewhere,anywhere. And here we are, dying from dysentery, disease and starvation, while bombs fall all around us. Every single islander here is disposable to them. There must come a time when this island stands for its own self, for its own people, under its own sovereignty. And that time must be soon.’
‘Careful,’ Sal says, lowering his voice. ‘You don’t want to sound anti-British.’
‘I am anti-everyone who is not pro-Maltese!’ the doctor says at the top of her voice. ‘I love my home and my people, and it is for them I fight, and no one else.’ She paces backand forth, her hands on her hips, elbows bent back, her head bowed as she does her best to contain her feelings.
It’s then that I see her children waiting alone in a scant patch of shade, no sign of Vittoria. The boy, Qalbi, wrestles Eugenie in his arms, the big old-fashioned pram standing in the sun.
‘Wait there,’ she tells her son. ‘I have one more person to see.’
‘I’m thirsty, Mama,’ he calls.
‘I’ll be one minute.’ She waves him away.
The baby begins to kick and cry.
