said.
She’d come from parents with low intellectual horizons, and she’d used words such as “best” a lot.
Maybe that’s what lay at the heart of everything. She had never felt worthy of the world in which she’d found herself, not worthy of the man who had taken her by the hand and led her into Eden.
But Eden didn’t come cheap—she must have learned that early on—and she had chosen to repay cruelty with kindness. She was known for her kindness. It was what defined her in the eyes of others. No one was unworthy of her selfless ministrations.
He suspected now that some baser urge had lain behind her behavior: an instinct for survival. How could her husband possibly harm such a kind and decent person, such a good wife?
It hadn’t worked, but she had kept the faith. It was hard to respect her for it, but at least it had shown a certain determination.
He saw her now, ruffling his hair, smiling warmly down at him, her prominent incisors, the small white scar on her lower lip from the time Father had struck her with a shoe. And he saw what she was doing: one person looking to provide the love of two. The intentions had been good, if ultimately counterproductive. The more she had smothered him with maternal affection, the more Father had felt the need to counteract her “damned pampering” of him.
It was strange that she had never stopped heaping praise upon all and sundry, even after the accident, when there was no longer any need to do so. He also found it strange that she had never taken tweezers to those unruly eyebrows when she must surely have wanted to, when at last she could.
That’s what annoyed him most, he realized—that even after Father was gone, he had managed to live on in her.
He lowered his arm to the mattress and smiled at this thought, a smile of pleasant surprise. When was the last time he had cared enough about anything to be annoyed by it?
It made him feel almost human.
DAY TWO
FREDDIE WAS ALMOST AN HOUR LATE FOR THEIR MEETING at the mortuary. When he finally appeared, reeking of iodine, from the bowels of the hospital building, he seemed surprised to find Max still waiting for him.
“I thought you’d be gone.”
“I heard what happened—of course I waited.”
“Yes, a nasty business.”
It certainly was. A passing orderly had explained the situation to Max. A wayward bomb had fallen well short of the dockyards during the early-morning raid and exploded at the entrance to a shelter in Marsa. Everyone had been safely inside by then, but it would have been far better for all of them if they’d stayed at home. The steel doors of the shelter had been blown in, and the Maltese not torn apart by the hail of metal had found themselves consumed by the ensuing fireball.
Freddie had obviously made an effort to scrub up after his labors, but had missed a couple of spots of blood on his cheek. Max tried his best to ignore them.
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“It’s what I trained for.” Freddie shrugged.
“Really? This?”
Freddie smiled weakly. “Well, not quite this.” He fished a lighter and a packet of Craven “A”s from his pocket. “Sometimes I wish they’d just invade. Then it would all stop.”
“If it stops here, it just gets worse in a lot of other places.”
“I suppose.”
They all knew the reasoning; there was no point in going over it again.
“Do you want to get some air?” asked Max.
“No. Let’s get it over with.” Freddie held out the packet of cigarettes.
Max raised his hand, declining the offer. “I’ve just put one out.”
“Take one,” said Freddie. “For the smell.”
Max had been in hospitals before, but only ever to visit wounded friends. Those airy, spotless wards with their ordered rows of beds and their gruff thick- ankled nurses had nothing in common with the mortuary of the Central Hospital.
The mortuary occupied a run of vast and gloomy ground-floor rooms. The windows were partially shuttered, allowing in just enough light to make identification possible. Corpses carpeted the tiled floors. Some of the bodies were covered, others not, and some weren’t bodies at all.
“We’re out of blankets, I’m afraid,” said Freddie as they picked their way through the first room. He might just
