Riva
Malta, 1942
Riva had no sense of how long they’d been trapped in the shelter and was losing hope. She’d given up pleading and bargaining with God. Given up hoping for a miracle and had no idea how long they could last without water. The airless shelter was hot, stuffy, and smelt of fear and the sooner death came the better. Her eyes were stinging, her head hurt and feeling sick to her stomach, all she could do was whisper prayers under her breath. As time stretched out, no longer with any meaning, she ached with longing for Bobby to hold her. Were they going to be buried in this awful thick silence until the end? Was she never going to see Bobby again?
In the blackness she picked up a faint sound of scraping,followed by a loud crack. She gasped, certain the shelter was about to collapse and then they’d be buried alive instantly. She flung herself back against the wall, her hands covering her ears, and waiting for the inevitable, but nothing more happened. There was a brief silence then the scratching resumed. And only then, in a lightning flash of hope, she realised where it was coming from and on hands and knees, she crept to the wall of fallen rocks where she screamed. ‘In here. We’re in here.’
She held her breath, heard nothing, shouted again until her throat was raw. Still nothing.
But then, thank God, a muffled voice. She couldn’t hear the words but whoever was on the other side, they were moving the rocks. Moving the rocks! So close. Her breath snagged as she waited, terrified more rocks might fall. The woman began to pray, her children crying, but eventually Riva saw a thin shaft of light coming through a tiny cleft.
‘Don’t move,’ she heard the man on the other side say. ‘We’ll get you out. Just don’t move any rocks on your side.’
She chewed the inside of her cheeks, hardly daring to hope. Unable to keep still she went to check on the elderly man. She’d been right. Hewasalready dead. Poor old boy must have died of fright when the bomb fell. She went back to the fallen rocks itching to move some herself but knowing she must not.
‘How many?’ the rescuer was asking as the hole grew a little larger. ‘How many trapped?’
She told him.
‘Right. When I’m ready I’ll ask you to pass the children through first. They will need to slide on their bellies.’
As Riva trained the torch on the woman and her children, the rescuers moved more rocks. The woman spoke rapidly in Maltese and tried to push the children towards the hole. The man let her know he was ready and Riva held her breath. The children clung to their mother, too scared to let go, but the man on the other side spoke Maltese too and eventually they complied and slithered towards his outstretched hands.
‘Now the woman and the baby,’ the man said. ‘Will she manage?’
‘I think so,’ Riva said.
The woman groaned in pain, but on her stomach and clutching the baby in front of her, she crawled through to the other side.
‘Now you,’ came the voice.
‘There is a dead man.’
‘We can’t risk this collapsing. We have to save the living.’
‘Let me just see if he has identification.’
She stumbled across to the man, went through his pockets, but found nothing.
There was a rumble and a loud crack as the rocks moved. Her heart lurched, and she hurried back to the hole, then holding her breath, she scrambled through to the other side where people were helping the woman and her children. Behind her came the sound of rocks falling again. She’d only just made it in time. She could barely stand up, was nauseous and hot, but breathing slowly in blessed relief. Someone rubbed her back and helped herout of the shelter. She felt dizzy and the world around her blurred then disappeared as she blacked out.
The next thing she knew she was in the medical centre, a scratchy blanket wrapped around her, and Bobby was sitting on her bed and gazing at her with hollowed, anxious eyes. But her vision was still blurred, and she glanced around in wonder. Was she imagining this? For a moment she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Was Bobby really there? She couldn’t properly recall what had happened and when she tried nothing came to her. She felt muddled, hazy, in thick unforgiving air as if still in the shelter. But then she heard birds chirping in a tree outside her window. Saw a painting of a deer on the wall opposite her bed. She must have escaped the shelter before it collapsed. But her eyes felt gritty and sore, and although her forehead seemed to be burning up, she was shivering. She shook her head, screwed up her eyes, opened them again and tried to focus.
‘It’s the shock,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right.’
She couldn’t reply, just rubbed her eyelids and then she felt it. The light seemed to turn luminous, and she was filled with a flood of so much joy and gratitude that it overflowed into great gulping sobs of relief.
‘I’m alive,’ she whispered when she could speak again, barely registering that Bobby was blinking back tears.
‘You are and thank God for it,’ he said in a choked voice, and then he caressed her cheek.
She reached for his hand and kissed it.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking at her in mock outrage. ‘I leave you alone for five minutes.’
‘I just went for a walk while you were busy with paperwork. I wanted to stock up.’ Her throat felt raw and her voice was rasping. ‘I thought I was going to die.’
‘You gave me a terrible fright. I was hunting for you everywhere.’
