'You mean Tim Evans was having it off with both women at the same time?'
'Oh, I don't know about that. Story was that this Lloyd Jones fellow had to go into hospital for an operation and his wife was left running the newsagent's on her own. By then Tim Evans was out of a job, so she got him into the shop to help her. That's how he paid for 'is lodgings.'
'By giving her a son?'
He grinned. 'All I said was he helped her in the shop. As far as we was concerned it was the red-haired lad as was illegit.'
Luis called down to us that he had just picked up the loom of a light almost dead over the bows. After about a quarter of an hour, when the white beam of it finally lifted above the horizon, we were able to identify it positively as the lighthouse on the highest point of the island of Gozo, which is 595 feet above sea level and has a range of twenty-four miles.
With no vessel in sight, I stopped both engines and we lay to, so that for the first time in three days we could have our drinks and our evening meal together in the saloon. By then I had finally made up my mind to go straight in at first light and clear health, customs and immigration in the normal way. Grand Harbour was no more than forty miles away, five hours' motoring at an economical eight knots, which meant three-hour watches for each of us, starting with Luis at 21.00.
It seemed an awful long time that I lay awake thinking about Malta. So much history, and the pale, honey-coloured limestone seeming to sprout churches, barracks, ramparts and fortresses everywhere, with hotels and every other type and period of building in such profusion that it hardly seemed possible there were farms scattered all over the island, secreted behind the endless stone walls. I had spent just over a year there, first training, then training others. Later I had gone back to stay with a Maltese family, one of those that are descended from the Knights, proud people whose forebears fought the Turks in the Great Siege at 15 6 5. That was when I met Soo.
Now, with all the vast stone familiarity of the place a short night's sleep away, my mind kept going over and over the future and its problems, recollections merging with thoughts of Gareth Lloyd Jones, wondering whether his ship would be there, how much the island would have changed, what the attitude of Soo's relatives would be. Her mother's father was still alive I knew, and the younger brother, who had gone into the Church, was vicar of the big church in Birzebbuga when last heard from — the elder brother had emigrated to Australia and was running a cattle station up north in Queensland. Soo herself had a cousin, Victoria, who was married to a lawyer and living in Sliema; the male cousins had both got themselves jobs in the States. I had met the lawyer once, a man of about my own age, very conservative in outlook, but a good underwater swimmer and he liked sailing.
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 thenharbour? 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 painted dghajsawas 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.
CHAPTER TWO
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 dghajsasto 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 appearedand 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 layalars, the Levies were all thrown in, the galleys as well that had been dragged overland from Marsamxett. Three thousand fanatical Muslims died that day.