in their schoolboy innuendo.
“Well, as long as you don’t blow the tanks too early.”
That was one he hadn’t heard before, and they giggled like two naughty schoolchildren.
“I can feel it when you laugh,” said Max.
“And when I do this …?”
She started to move, a slow, rhythmic roll of the hips, a reminder that they weren’t in fact welded together, one being.
The distant bark of a heavy battery suggested that the searchlights had picked out the first of the raiders.
“There’s no hurry,” she whispered.
“Tell that to our German friends.”
“Let them do their worst. We’re untouchable.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I. If I’m going to die, I want it to be like this, with you inside me.”
And that’s where he stayed. Long after it had become clear that Valetta was the target, long after the whistle and crump of the first bombs had drowned out the dirge of the siren, he was still there, inside her. And as the heavens outside pitched and rolled in one vast, undying thunderclap of sound, they twisted and turned together on the bed, at one with the holocaust, somehow a part of it, immune to it. Terrific concussions tossed the building, but the tremors seemed only to resonate with the febrile tension of their bodies. And as the raid built in ferocity, so did their own exertions, rising to a crescendo, almost in defiance now, looking to drive back the deadly storm, to outlast it.
This they did, their wild cries of release rending the air as the last of the bombers headed for home, chased back to Sicily by a few hopeful shell bursts.
They lay damp and spent in each other’s arms for a long while, lacquered together in the eerie silence, the acrid smell of cordite leaking into the room through the shutters.
“That was … well, like nothing else I’ve ever known,” said Max.
“Did the earth move for you too?”
They laughed weakly and kissed and held each other tighter.
“I told you they couldn’t touch us.”
“They came pretty damned close.”
An enormous explosion had shaken the building to its foundations during the height of the raid
Outside, the “Raiders Passed” siren sounded its single note.
“They’ll be back,” said Max.
They all knew the pattern by now. Kesselring would keep the planes coming, varying his targets throughout the night. It was unlikely that Valetta would suffer another assault, but you couldn’t bank on it.
“Maybe you should go now,” said Mitzi.
“Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I want to know why you summoned me here.”
“You know the reason. I know you know, because Lionel told me this afternoon. Apparently he bumped into you at the submarine base the other day.”
“That’s right.”
“And was a jolly time had by all?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How long have you known? Three days? Four? A week? Longer?”
“Hugh told me at the party.”
“And you didn’t think to share it with me?”
“He only mentioned it later, after you and I had talked.”
Mitzi lay silent for a moment. “I’m sorry. It just seems like I’m the last person to hear that I’m leaving the island.”
“You should be glad. Things aren’t going to get any better here for a long while.”
“Alexandria sounds ghastly.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
He had rather enjoyed his time in Alexandria, although his appreciation of the place might well have had something to do with the fact that he’d arrived there directly from Atbara, a desolate, flyblown corner of the Sudan, where he’d spent a miserable couple of months on an intelligence course.
“The bar at the Windsor Palace is worth a visit,” said Max. “Their cocktails are second to none.”
“My God, a bright future beckons with Baedeker’s.”
“I’m just saying there are worse places to be. At least you won’t be pounded to pieces on a daily basis.”
