The Information Officer

Max hesitated, reaching for his wineglass. Idle. Overweight. Overbearing. Cruel.

“Roland’s all right.”

Any pretense of a relationship had disappeared long ago, when Roland—not for the first time—had referred to Max’s mother as “that French whore.” Dr. Tomkins, the local GP, had done a good job of resetting Roland’s nose, although it still veered a little to the left when viewed in certain lights.

Even as he had landed that punch, Max had known that Roland hadn’t been wholly to blame, that he had only been parroting the words of his mother. Sylvia had worked tirelessly over the years to drive a wedge between Max and her own son. Everyone knew the reason why. Everyone knew what was at stake.

Max had toyed with the idea of forgoing his birthright, of stepping aside and allowing the estate to pass to Roland—and maybe he still would—but prolonging their distress offered some small satisfaction for their hostile treatment of him over the years, the injustice of which still filled him with impotent and uncomprehending anger in his darker moments.

He labored under no illusions—he’d had a privileged upbringing, and to complain about it seemed somehow perverse—but he had always felt himself very much alone in the world, and he held Sylvia and Roland largely to blame for this. His father was exonerated on the grounds that he had never given Max cause to doubt their special bond. They shared many of the same interests. Whether it was facing each other across a chessboard or fiddling with the guts of some motorcycle or casting flies for trout on the river, they both knew that those private moments were more about reinforcing their silent alliance than about the activity itself. They discussed literature and art and films, and all the other things that Sylvia deemed too trivial to be aired at the dinner table, such as the book his father had been working on for the past ten years or more.

It was a biography of the young Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion, who, in spite of his lowly origins, had won the race to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs, beating the most eminent orientalists in Europe to the coveted prize. It was a story well worth telling, but why his father should have devoted so many years of his life to the subject was anyone’s guess. Max suspected it was something to do with the idea of a young man setting his sights on a goal and persevering in the face of insuperable odds—something his father had failed to do. He also suspected that the book would never be completed, because if it ever were, his father would no longer have an excuse to potter off to the London Library or the British Museum on the train.

Max had had no intention of sharing any of this with Teresa, but the words had just tumbled from his lips, almost as if he were under the spell of some sorceress, which he began to think he might be.

“Maybe he has a lover in London,” Teresa remarked.

“That’s … well, an unexpected observation.”

“Why?”

“From a Catholic.”

“Say what you like about us Catholics, but we understand human weakness.” She gave a knowing smile. “And I see from your face that the idea is not such a bad one for you.”

No, it wasn’t: his father stealing a few moments of happiness in the arms of a lady friend. He just felt a little foolish that it hadn’t occurred to him before.

Meanwhile, down at the other end of the table, the captain from the Cheshires was evidently doing a good job of entertaining Lilian, judging from her laughter. A few weeks before, it wouldn’t have mattered to him. Now it did. So much so that when the evening finally broke up, he was quite ready to leave, to be gone. That impulse vanished the moment Lilian asked him to stay on a while longer. There was a work matter she needed to discuss with him.

It was a chilly, clear night, and she held her woolen cardigan tight around her shoulders as they strolled in the palace garden, their feet crunching softly on the gravel pathway.

“You looked like you were enjoying yourself with the blond Adonis from the Cheshires.”

“Tristran.”

“Of course. How could I forget?”

“He’s very brave.”

“Really?”

“Yes, he told me.”

In the darkness he could just make out the gleam of her teeth.

“You know what? He probably is. The Cheshires have had the dirty end of the stick for quite a while.”

“You’re defending him?” she asked.

“Yes. No. I hate him.”

They both knew there was another message buried in the words—an admission on his part—and he quickly filled the awkward silence with a question.

“So, what did you want to talk about?”

She had a couple of questions about some material sent by the Ministry of Information to the Times of Malta that had found its way through to her at Il- Berqa.

“Ignore it,” was Max’s advice. “Most of what we get from them is complete rubbish or out of date—usually both.”

“That’s no way to talk about your superiors.”

“I can only imagine it’s done on purpose.”

“On purpose?”