But she mustn’t cry! Instead, she shoved her book under his nose. ‘Did you know a railway used to run right here? Under the city? Under our feet? It came out in Freedom Square, by The Opera House.’
He flinched. ‘A railway?’
She scrabbled through the pages of old photographs. ‘Right here! Look, below us, on the floor of the ditch, you see that platform and the railings—that was the station! Amazing, isn’t it? It ran underground from here and came out in Floriana by another big gateway, the Portes des Bombes, about a kilometre away. Look at this photo, look at the city gate. You can see it’s the same place, can’t you? Even if it’s eighty years since the railway shut down.’ Her voice was shrill. She sounded like a phoney. But at least she wasn’t crying.
Slowly, he glanced from the photograph to the ditch, to the gate and back to the page. ‘Yes. I suppose you’re right. It’s the same place.’
‘Isn’t it fascinating? Steam trains beneath the rock. There must’ve been ventilation shafts everywhere. I think it’s extraordinary.’
He wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘I suppose it looks romantic in the black and white photos, all those upright old guys in suits and hats and women in the black costume—’
‘The faldetta. Also called the ghonella. It was the traditional costume—’
He shoved the book into her bag. ‘Alicia! Really, it’s not extraordinary. Few things are! The railway was part of everyday life then, and the remains are part of the scenery now. That tunnel down there has been turned into a garage. The platform is just an empty block of stone.’
She wriggled her hands free. ‘I think it’s extraordinary, the way the remnants have survived. I’m going down to look at it.’
He called after her. ‘It’s just a piece of rock! The island’s made of the stuff!’
She halted suddenly, seeing it through his eyes. An abandoned platform and a couple of blocked off tunnels. Anger rose inside her like a swarm of bees. ‘Well, I’ll show you something that is extraordinary, then!’
She marched away through the teeming bus station, threading through queues at the kiosks for fig rolls with their fragrance of oil and honey, following the foot of another level of fortifications.
He came up behind her. ‘This is madness in this heat, Alicia. Let’s go somewhere cool. We must talk. I need to make you understand what I went through.’
But she did! Her heart had broken for him and once she’d thought she would wait forever. Funny how forever had changed.
She led him down a zigzag path with a battered signpost to the Lascaris War Rooms. ‘It will be cool in here. This little tunnel is cut right from the rock, look, and it goes down and down.’ Their footfalls echoed down the hewn steps as they descended through the tunnels, emerging here and there into the fresh air, only to turn and enter another level. At the entrance to the war rooms she paid for them both in euros and they were given small cassette players to provide a commentary. ‘It’s a complex of rocky cells that housed the military operations command for naval movement in the Mediterranean during the Second World War.’
Every time Grant tried to speak, Alicia jumped in with a fascinating fact. ‘This was actually Montgomery’s office.’ She showed him a tiny chamber with a tin desk and filing cabinet. ‘And the next was Eisenhower’s. They could look over into the operations room below and see where their ships were on that enormous map.’ Mannequins garbed in dated woollen uniforms representing the service personnel of more than sixty years before stared glassily at the chart.
‘I see.’ He remained one pace behind, his cassette player clutched, unused, in his hands as she drifted from room to room, up and down stairs.
They reached the end of the tour and handed back the hardware. ‘So, wasn’t that an extraordinary place?’ she demanded.
He shrugged.
They climbed back up through the network of tunnels and, finally, the zigzag path. Alicia rushed them along like tourists from a cruise ship, trying to devour the city in an afternoon. ‘We’re really close to the Upper Barracca Gardens, here—you’ll never have seen a view like it.’
He’d stopped trying to talk and she was glad. His hurt was so much easier to deal with when he wasn’t wringing her heart with his words. They sweated their way up to the gardens and he strode beside her, surly as a bear, fidgeting while she bought bottles of ice-cold water. She took him to the viewing rail at which other tourists hung, oohing and aahing at the beauty and magnificence of Grand Harbour below them with its five creeks of clear blue sea dancing blindingly in the sunshine, the wakes of every vessel, from tiny motorboats to cruise liners, crisscrossing the waves. ‘There,’ she breathed. ‘How about that? The extraordinary only takes a little looking for.’
Even Grant in a black mood couldn’t quite ignore the majesty of Grand Harbour. He watched the boats and gazed at the cities on the other shore and let the breeze ruffle his hair, sipping from the bottle of cold water. She settled beside him at the railings.
Without warning, he dipped his head and kissed her with cold, watery lips.
‘No!’ She jumped back. And then, seeing his hurt, ‘Grant, I’m sorry—’
‘It’s OK. I get it. I shouldn’t have just turned up here.’ He was already walking away, defeat in the slope of his shoulders.
She turned back to the view, the sea and the boats and the buildings melting together as her eyes filled. Better to let him go. Better in the long run. Fishing tissues from her bag with shaking hands, she blew her nose, hard.
And, because her heart was breaking, she murmured, ‘Grant, darling, it’s only because I’m ill!’ But she was careful to say it only under her breath.
Then, suddenly, his hand was on her arm. ‘What?’ He spun her to face him. ‘What do you mean, ill?’
Heart pounding, she shook her head, unable to speak through a throat rigid with sobs. She hadn’t meant him to hear. Had she?
‘How ill?’ He uncapped her bottle of water and lifted it to her mouth.
‘Pretty ill,’ she managed. She brushed his hair out of his eyes tenderly. ‘Too ill.’
Despite the heat of the day, he was white, not red like so many of the laughing, smiling tourists clicking away at the panorama and each other. ‘I can’t play guessing games. Not about illness. Please tell me.’
She sighed. ‘It started with a lump.’ She indicated her breast, the time bomb she carried under her T-shirt, the nightmare in her bra, the enemy. ‘Breast cancer. Like Mum. Like Ginny.’
They took the ferry back to Sliema and trailed up the hill in silence. Dust gathered itchily between her bare toes. Once, he put his arm around her to prevent her from being bustled from the narrow pavement, but mainly they walked through the streets without touching.
Her apartment was small but comfortable with a shower room, a lounge with a kitchen at one end and a bedroom. She didn’t have much with her: summer clothes, some books, her laptop and MP3 player. She didn’t need much. She spent a lot of her time reading books about the history or rattling off on a bus to visit catacombs, the hypogeum, the cliffs, the churches, to drink Marsovin wine or eat pastizzi. She hadn’t told any of her Maltese relatives that she was here. She needed time alone.
She brought iced water to him on the blue leather sofa.
He put it down untouched. ‘You’ve seen doctors?’
‘Doctors.