“How did you imagine we would meet for the first time?” She asked, involuntarily lowering her eyes.
“I’d be on the deck of a big ship and you’d be on the quayside,” he said, relaxing a fraction. “You’d be standing apart from the crowd and when I spotted you you’d be looking straight at me.”
“Men!” Marija scoffed gently. “I was on the waterfront at Sliema the night when you brought HMS Talavera into the Creek. Lieutenant Hannay asked me to meet you when you came ashore with your father.” She made herself meet the man’s gaze. “I could not. After what my brother did…”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
“But you should. Your father is a great man,” she pursed her lips, “and scandal follows great men…”
Peter Christopher pressed Marija’s hand.
She looked away.
“You are going to have real shiners on both eyes,” Peter observed sympathetically. He grinned and she mirrored his expression momentarily.
“It is not funny.”
“No,” he agreed.
“I was stupid,” Marija declared, finding her everyday voice for the first time. “I shouldn’t have locked myself away here like a nun.”
“A nun?”
“That is what I have been all my life, I think.”
The man frowned, not knowing quite where she was going.
“Yesterday, I was stupid,” she reiterated. “I saw you in the piazza. And then you were gone. I thought I had lost you forever,” she shrugged philosophically, “so I ran after you! How stupid is that?”
“You ran?”
“Like I once ran when I was six years old.”
Peter Christopher wanted to wrap her in his arms. But how do I do that without hurting her?
“I ran for three, four, maybe five paces,” Marija continued, recounting her ‘stupidity’ with very nearly happy self-deprecation, “before I remembered that I cannot run.” She gesticulated at her face with her free hand. “As you see, Peter.”
“But for four or five paces you did run, Marija,” the man pointed out with a pride that stung his eyes, threatened to raise a lump in his throat.
“I thought I was about to lose you forever.”
“No chance!” He murmured vehemently.
And before he knew it Marija Calleja was in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder and they were both crying.
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher was over an hour late reporting to Captain ‘D’ in his immaculate day room at the stern of the Weapon class destroyer Scorpion. The ‘Leader’ of the 7th Destroyer Squadron was moored fifty yards away from HMS Talavera.
“I apologise for my lateness, sir,” he blurted as soon as the cabin door closed at his back. “I have no excuse. It was my fault.”
Captain ‘D’ was a greying, generously proportioned man of around average height with alert, possibly querulous green eyes that appraised the junior officer with keen intent for several long seconds.
Nicholas Davey had left the Royal Navy, retiring to build and race yachts on his fifty-fourth birthday. That had been in 1961. After the October War he had volunteered his experience and his services to the Admiralty in its relocated HQ buildings in Plymouth. He had flown out to Malta shortly before Christmas to take command of the Scorpion. On Boxing Day he had been promoted to Captain and directed to reform the 7th Destroyer Squadron, collecting together the available Battle and Weapon class Fast Air Detection conversions into a single homogenous fighting unit.
“Goodness me,” he grunted, ponderously rising from behind his desk where he’d been sifting through his other captain’s readiness reports. “You are the spitting image of your father when he was younger!”
Peter Christopher deduced from his new commander’s tone and general demeanour that he wasn’t in trouble for his tardiness in making an appearance.
“So people say, sir,” he concurred flatly, still standing rigidly at attention.
“The C-in-C’s flag lieutenant sent me a message you’d been delayed at HQ,” Captain Davey guffawed. “There’s supposed to be a huge flap on this morning! Presumably, we’ll hear about how it affects us sooner or later, what?” He stuck out his hand in welcome. His grip was firmly enthusiastic. “Sit yourself down, you look like you could do with a stiff drink, young man.”
“My, er,” Peter Christopher struggled to explain, not quite crediting what he was about to voice, “my, er, fiancée had a nasty fall yesterday, sir. Getting bombed off Cape Finisterre and the Lampedusa affair didn’t shake me up half as much as…”
Captain Davey laughed.
“You’re getting hitched?”
“As soon as possible, sir. Although, Marija says that won’t be for a month or so. Her face is a bit of a mess at the moment and her mother will want to make her wedding dress, and she has a big family, and,” he halted, grimaced apologetically. “Sorry, sir. I’m sure you’ve got more important things to do than hear me witter on this way?”
“Probably,” the other man chuckled. “Have you known ‘Marija’ long?”
“Since I was a teenager, sir.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise you were out here when your father was CO of First Cruiser Squadron?”
“Er, no, sir. I’d never been to Malta until a few days ago.”
Captain Nicholas Davey didn’t hide his confusion.
The younger man hurriedly attempted to clarified matters.
“I only met Marija face to face for the first time three hours ago, sir.”
This of course, didn’t really clarify anything in particular but before Peter Christopher sowed further seeds of confusion the alarm bells began to sound throughout the ship.
Chapter 47
It was twenty-four hours since they had heard the distant eruption of the bomb in Limassol harbour. On the surface a gale was blowing, a short-lived Mediterranean winter storm. In a day or two the sea would be calm again. Two hundred and fifty feet down there was no wave motion, all was still. And HMS Dreadnought was at war.
While the Victorious Battle group came up from the south to fly off personnel from Akrotiri and her escorts took turns off-loading evacuees from Limassol and other smaller ports, including Pathos, Dreadnought was standing sentinel barring the south-western approaches to Cyprus. Her orders were simple; to hunt and kill anything on or below the waves that trespassed in her patrol ‘box’. The small British garrison on the island had withdrawn into the hills and forests of the hinterland, HMS Blake’s two undamaged escorts, the destroyer HMS Decoy and the frigate, HMS Salisbury were at the eastern end of the island performing a similar blocking role. Hawker Hunters operating out of Akrotiri were attempting to provide air cover for the two surface ships but Decoy and Salisbury they were out on a limb, dangerously exposed to submarine or air attack.
“Captain,” a timid voice murmured.
Simon Collingwood turned and smiled, light-lipped at the woman holding a steaming mug out to him. She was ready to flee if he so much as batted an eyelid. The woman was slim, uncomfortable in the unfamiliar — two or three sizes too large — dark blue boiler suit she’d been given to replace her torn and soaked kaftan and shawls. She was barefoot, her feet two sizes too small for any of the spare plimsolls the crew wore. Her dark eyes were framed by the scarf concealing her hair. He found himself wishing she wouldn’t look at him with such unquestioning gratitude and, unsettling awe. Her name was Maya Hayek and she, her younger sister and three children now occupied Dreadnought’s commanding officer’s cabin. The children, aged five, three and two, a boy and two girls were orphans whom the sisters, aged twenty-three and twenty had rescued during their desperate flight from their home town of Golbasi, twenty miles south of the capital Ankara, to the coast.