Silence again.
But soon it was broken by a low growl and then a scream. Riva could only imagine the pain the woman was in and held her hand, speaking soothingly in response to desperate pleas for help. Riva had no idea how long the labour would last.
The woman began panting between slow breaths.
Sick at heart, Riva waited and prayed.
It seemed colder in the shelter, or hotter.Which?How long would the oxygen last? Riva’s thoughts raced and raced until she felt light-headed, longing for nothing but to be able to close her eyes and go to sleep.
But then a high-pitched, furious wail arose. It was unmistakable. The baby. Riva immediately came to full consciousness and reached down between the woman’s raised knees. Amazed, her heart thudding, she felt a soft, wriggling infant on the ground. She unwrapped her own scarf and carefully cocooned the baby in it, then passed the little bundle over to its mother. The woman was talking rapidly now but Riva did not understand, though then she heard the word ‘afterbirth’.
Of course. She knew about that and waited, hoping it would just happen on its own.
After a while, the woman gasped again and there was the sound of liquid gushing. Blood? Was it blood? Then a wet slithering sound.
The woman made a scissoring action with her fingers and said, ‘cut.’
Riva didn’t have a knife or scissors, did she? Maybe nail scissors in her bag. What if she couldn’t cut it? Was it dangerous? She really didn’t know.Hurry, she told herself.Hurry. She put down the torch and with trembling fingers she felt for the nail scissors and almost cried in relief when the zipped inner pocket revealed them along with a lipstick. She picked up the torch again to look. The afterbirth lay like a purple slab of lumpy liver. But where should she cut the cord? The woman indicated higher up so Riva battled the tough cord with her minute, ineffective scissors, the woman making exasperated impatient sounds. When it was done the woman used her hands to indicate a knotting action and held the baby up, pulling the scarf away. Riva quickly tied a knot in the cord quite close to the baby’s belly. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath and now she let it out in a long juddering sigh.
The two children snuggled up with their mother and Riva went back to the fallen rocks, shining the torch trying to work out which ones might be safe to move. Which might cause another rockfall? She was frightened to move any at all but decided there was nothing else for it so gingerly she removed a few of the smaller rocks, graduallygaining confidence to roll a couple of the bigger ones away. In between moving rocks, she paused and shouted for help but now she heard no voices coming from the other side. Exhausted, her throat and chest raw, she sat back on her heels. What if they never got out?
CHAPTER 44
Florence
Malta, 1946
As the sun rose, Florence stood on the deck thinking about Rosalie and smelling the tang of seaweed and the salt of the Mediterranean Sea. After all this time, was she about to find her aunt? Discover her secrets? Find out what she’d been doing all these years? Would she be able to give Claudette the news she wanted? She gripped the railings praying for something positive and determined to do everything she could. She felt hopeful but knew so little about Rosalie and wondered if she’d even know her if she passed her in the street. All she really knew was that she had bright red hair, had been a wild child, and that she owned the same charm bracelet as Claudette, which she, Florence, now wore every day. And Florence knew,or thought she did, that at some point Rosalie had probably been in Malta. But it seemed like such a long shot, and she might well have moved on somewhere else years ago.
It was still early when the ferry from Syracuse dropped anchor in the waters of Valletta harbour. As she heard the shrieking seabirds welcoming them, Florence took in the amazing sight of massive walls, ramparts and bastions, rising like cliffs from the depths of the sea.
‘What a place, Jack,’ she said a few minutes later, and reached for his hand as they climbed into one of the small vessels bobbing in the water. Adghaisa, they were told. Painted red, blue and yellow, it was a gondola-like thing, with painted eyes on either side of the bow.As the high-ended little boat – propelled by a standing man with an oar who pushed instead of pulled – reached some wide steps, they climbed out and looked around them. Florence could smell fish and saw dozens of cats lining up where the catches were being brought in. But she stared in horror at the destruction of much of the dockland.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘They have so much still to do.’
Edward had been as good as his word and Jack had been given the phone number and departmental address of a government administrator in charge of plans to restore Malta to its former glory. He had also booked them a room at the British Hotel overlooking the harbour.
As they made their way there, they saw the heartbreaking evidence of the bomb damage – rubble, Blitz-battered architecture, and even some of the ancient buildings totally destroyed. There were temporary homes everywhere, or maybe they were shelters.
‘What do you think?’ she asked Jack.
‘These people must have lost their homes.’
The little huts were made of tin and chunks of fallen masonry. Florence could smell charcoal and frying onions and saw a group of women cooking in the street on open fires. Other women nearby were washing clothes in tin tubs, or chopping wood while children dashed around, shrieking.
‘God, but they’ve suffered here,’ Jack said. ‘The RAF operated mainly from an airfield at Luqa, here in Malta,’ he said. ‘It became their Mediterranean Command HQ during the war.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Common knowledge now.’
Their hotel was comfortable, but Florence’s heart sank as she thought of the impossible task of finding Rosalie in all this chaos.
‘I wonder where to start,’ she said while Jack looked out of the window. ‘I’d like to get to know the island a bit, find my feet, and then make a plan. You can talk to people you meet too.’
Jack went back down to reception to call the number he’d been given by Edward and set up a meeting for the following day. He didn’t know if there would be any chance of work while he was here but would give it a try.
‘Come to bed,’ she said much later that day, after they had wandered around the town for a while.
