The September Girls (31 page)

Cara didn’t point out that thousands of seamen had already lost their lives, their ships sunk by the German Navy - the U-boats were the worst, slithering silently under the water, the ships oblivious to the danger lying beneath. Maria wasn’t the only person who claimed the war was phoney, even the newspapers complained that nothing was happening.

It was a strange Christmas. The awful weather didn’t help and, although Mam and Dad did their best to be cheerful, Cara could tell it was an effort. Tyrone was in a foul mood, despite being taken on by the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board as an improver, which meant he would finish his apprenticeship as an electrician on full pay. He was still bitter he wasn’t in uniform. Even Nancy Gates seemed down in the dumps.

‘I wish this damn war would start properly,’ she said to Cara. ‘It’s the waiting that’s getting to me, knowing that the sky’s about to fall in any minute.’

‘I’ve done something awful,’ Cara confessed. ‘Don’t tell Mam, I’ll tell her meself when the time comes, but I’ve put me name down to serve overseas. She’ll have a fit, she’s already worried to death about our Fergus. I almost wish I hadn’t done it.’

‘It’s your life, Cara, not your mam’s, and you’ve only got the one. You must do with it whatever you wish.’

The only place where everyone appeared to be having a good time was in Eleanor’s house in Tigh Street. Oliver and Lewis had somehow managed to get a turkey, a Christmas cake and two bottles of sherry. Eleanor was in a state of high excitement when the Caffreys turned up for tea on Christmas Day.

‘It’s been the best Christmas I’ve ever known,’ she gushed. ‘I must be the luckiest woman alive: my divorce has come through, Jonathan’s promised to go to university and I’ve spent the day with the two of most adorable men alive.’

‘They’ll never take me at university,’ Jonathan whispered to Cara. ‘I only told Mummy I’d go to keep her off my back.’

 

Cara had been back in Bedford a week when she and Fielding were informed they were being sent to Malta as soon as the driving course finished, but Peggy was destined for North Africa. Although she put in a written request to the commander of the camp asking if she could go to Malta with her friends, the next day she was called into the staff sergeant’s office where the request was bluntly refused.

‘You’re in the Army now, Cross, not the Circle of Friends. You’ll go where you’re told and it’s just too bad if you’re unhappy about it.’

 

‘Our Cara’s being sent to Malta,’ Brenna told Colm a few days later when he returned from work. She waved Cara’s letter. ‘There’ll be no fighting there, will there, darlin’? It’ll just be like one long holiday, same as with Fergus.’

‘We’ll just have to see, Bren,’ Colm said easily, although he felt fearful. France was like a time bomb, likely to go off at any minute, and whoever held Malta held the key to the Mediterranean. It had a fine natural harbour that Germany would, quite literally, kill for. If there was one place in the world where he didn’t want his little girl to go, it was Malta.

Malta 1940

‘Caffrey,’ Corporal Culpepper yelled. ‘Captain Bradford wants taking to Grand Harbour and he’s asked for you.
Caffrey
!’ he bellowed when Cara didn’t instantly appear.

‘Coming, Corpy, coming. Give us time to get up off me behind.’ She put down her half-drunk tea, seized her cap and jacket, and hurried into his office.

‘No cheek, now, Caffrey,’ the burly corporal said, grinning. ‘And a very nice behind it is too, I must say,’ he remarked, smacking his lips and about to give it a pat as Cara passed. She dodged out of the way just in time: Corporal Culpepper was too free with his hands.

She walked through the workshop where two mechanics were down the pit working on the underside of a lorry and a car was having its windscreen replaced. Outside, on an expanse of oil-stained concrete where the vehicles were parked, Fielding was washing a car, almost invisible inside her overalls. ‘Did Culpepper get you?’ she shouted.

‘Not this time,’ Cara said grimly. She slid into the first staff car in the line, a giant Humber Hawk painted khaki, drove it a short distance along the dusty road to Marzipan Hall, where she stopped, jumped out, opened the rear door and waited for Captain Bradford to emerge. Marzipan Hall wasn’t the real name of the huge building where the senior and clerical staff of the British Royal Artillery had their offices and billets, but the glazed yellow bricks must have reminded the first arrivals of a cake and the name had stuck. It had been built two centuries ago for an Italian duke and there were more than forty rooms within its impressive interior. Cara and nine other women drivers were billeted in an abandoned farmhouse a stone’s throw away, their services available, not only to the officers of the Royal Artillery, but the Royal Ordnance, the Royal Service and the Royal Infantry Corps who were scattered around the island.

Captain Bradford emerged through the magnificent, carved doors. ‘Morning, Caffrey,’ he said shyly. He was a small, kindly man of about fifty, completely bald, who seemed nervous with women. Unmarried, he’d joined the Army in the Great War and had made it his career. Cara always tried her best to put him at his ease. It must have worked, as he always asked for her when he required a driver.

‘Morning, sir.’ She stood stiffly to attention and saluted, then gave him a glowing smile.

‘Nice day for the cricket,’ he remarked as he climbed in the back.

‘Is it, sir?’

‘Don’t they play cricket in Liverpool, Caffrey?’

‘I imagine they do, sir, but my family were only interested in football.’

‘Liverpool or Everton?’

‘Liverpool, sir. It’s the Catholic team, you see.’

‘Ah, yes, you’re a papist, aren’t you, Caffrey? You must feel at home in Malta: it’s overrun with churches and every day is a saint’s day.’

‘I’m enjoying it very much, Captain.’ As if to prove the accuracy of his words, she had to slow down while passing a tiny procession of women and children carrying embroidered banners and garlands of flowers, led by a priest bearing a wooden cross. They were singing a hymn she didn’t recognize and were probably on their way to the little roadside shrine she came to a few minutes later.

‘Which saint is it today?’ the captain asked.

‘I don’t know, sir. We’re not all
that
religious in Liverpool. We only go mad at Easter and Christmas and have processions in May. I took part in a few myself when I was young.’

The captain chuckled. ‘You’re not exactly old now, Caffrey.’

He lapsed into silence while she drove through the barren countryside. There was nothing pretty about Malta: the scenery was rugged and the soil more red than brown, although she understood it would improve in spring when fields would be full of blossom. The temperature for March was remarkably warm and the mid-morning sun blazed through the windows, making the car feel like an oven.

‘Do you mind if I open a window, Captain?’

‘Not at all, my dear. That’s better,’ he said when the window had been wound down. ‘Feeling the heat, are you?’

‘Just a bit.’

‘You’re not used to it yet, that’s why. It’ll be cooler when we reach the coast.’

Cara ran her finger around the inside of her collar. It felt damp and she couldn’t wait to reach the coast. As Malta was a mere seventeen miles long and nine miles wide and Marzipan Hall was situated between Mdina and Rabat near the centre of the island, it never took long to reach anywhere. Cara went to Mass in St Paul’s Cathedral in tiny Mdina every Sunday. Rabat, a much bigger place, with plenty of restaurants and two cinemas, was where she spent most of her leisure hours, as it saved hitching a lift to Valletta, the capital.

Ten minutes later, she was driving down Mediterranean Street on the outskirts of Valletta, a cool breeze ruffling her hair. The air smelled salty and fresh.

The Grand Harbour was lined with an odd mixture of ships, ranging from the grim, grey shapes of naval vessels, rusty cargo boats and brightly painted fishing smacks, to a few elegant yachts bobbing lazily in the clear, blue-green water.

The road curved and she was passing St Elmo’s Palace when Captain Bradford asked her to stop outside a little café that was just opening on the far side of the road: tables and chairs were being put outside by a young waiter with film star looks. ‘I have a meeting here, Caffrey, and it won’t be over until midday.’

‘Shall I come back and fetch you then, sir?’ She checked her watch: it was twenty-five to eleven.

‘Hang around, my dear, it’s only an hour and a half. Do a bit of sightseeing - and take that jacket off. An hour or so, and you’ll be melting in that thing.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The captain disappeared inside the café. Cara parked outside, gleefully removed her jacket, and rolled up her shirtsleeves - they’d been forbidden to do so until summer arrived. She strolled back to the harbour, bought a coffee from a stall frequented by fishermen and sat on the wall watching the morning’s catch being unloaded, although she hated the sight of the poor fish being thrown into slithering, silver heaps, their heads rising in desperation as they gasped their last breath.

The fishermen eyed her curiously. She was so different from their own women: tall with red-gold hair and, what’s more, wearing a uniform, whereas their women were small and dark and dressed like peasants. Malta was another world and she was still getting used to the place as well as the temperature.

With the sun warm on her back and the sky like blue velvet, not a cloud in sight, the sea shimmering like silk with barely a ripple in it, she wondered what it was like in Liverpool on this particular March morning. In Mam’s last letter, posted two weeks before, she’d said the weather was just as bad as at Christmas. ‘Every morning there’s snow up the window sill,’ and Cara shuddered at the thought, although it came with a wish to be in front of a roaring fire in Shaw Street, all snug and cosy, with a cup of hot tea in her hand. The wish swiftly fled and she stretched out her legs to the sun and had another wish, that she wasn’t wearing thick, khaki stockings and could get a tan.

It came to her how much more she knew of the world than her mother. Mam had only travelled from Ireland to Liverpool where she’d stayed put, never leaving its environs except for the occasional day out in New Brighton or Southport, yet she loved anything new. She would like Malta with its strong, Catholic traditions and numerous shrines and churches, its never-ending saints’ days and religious festivals, usually accompanied by a thrilling display of fireworks.

‘Miss! Hey, miss.’ The shouts were coming from behind. Cara turned and saw three sailors jumping up and down on the deck of their ship, waving frantically. She waved back and they cheered. ‘What’s your name?’ one yelled.

‘Cara Caffrey,’ she yelled back.

‘Where are you from, Cara?’

‘Liverpool.’

The smallest sailor leapt about in a frenzy of delight. ‘I’m a scouser too, from Edge Hill. Me name’s Ernie Thomas.’

‘I’m from Toxteth: Shaw Street.’

‘What’cha doing tonight, Cara?’

She shrugged extravagantly and spread her hands. ‘I don’t know. I might be on duty.’

‘If you’re not on duty, we’ll be in St Patrick’s Bar in Merchant Street from eight o’clock on. Bring a friend.’

‘Bring two friends.’

‘I’ll try. I can’t promise anything.’ She backed away, laughing. She had no intention of meeting the sailors whether she was on duty or not, but hadn’t liked to turn them down. They continued to shout as she crossed the road, having remembered that Merchant Street was no distance away and it had a market every day except Sunday. There was still more than an hour to go before the captain finished his meeting.

She wandered up and down the vibrantly covered stalls that mainly sold food, although a few displayed local craftwork: gold and silver filigree jewellery, decorated glass, ornaments fashioned out of limestone. She was particularly enamoured with the lace-work - she’d already noticed women sitting outside their houses working away with their lace-makers’ cushions - Mam would love a tablecloth or a bedspread. As Cara had only a few Maltese lira with her, she contented herself with two lace-trimmed hankies for now.

At quarter to twelve, having exhausted the market, she walked slowly back to the café where she was to collect Captain Bradford, sat at a table outside and ordered coffee from the waiter with the film star looks.

‘You are a very good-looking lady,’ he announced when he came with the drink.

‘And you are a very handsome man,’ she said in return and couldn’t resist a smile when he blushed to the roots of his hair and almost ran back into the café.

‘This is the life!’ she whispered. It was like being paid to have a holiday of a lifetime. Lulled by the sun, she must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes, she was startled to find a young airman sitting opposite, grinning widely.

‘You looked like Sleeping Beauty,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about kissing you awake, but was worried you might turn into a frog.’

It was Cara’s turn to blush. ‘How long have you been there?’

‘An hour, two, I’m not sure.’

‘Liar.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve only been here five minutes.’

‘Are you waiting for the Army top brass?’

‘Yes, Captain Bradford.’ She saw a grey saloon car had been parked behind the khaki Humber.

‘I’m here for Captain Chapman. My mum wanted me to be a pilot and she’s a bit disappointed I’m only a driver. But I’ve got a stripe. See! I’m a lance corporal. I never expected to get a stripe and I’m terribly proud.’ He pointed to the stripe on his sleeve and Cara started to laugh. He was a most appealing young man, if not exactly handsome. About twenty-one, his hair was light-brown, cut very short, and she suspected it would have been curly if allowed to grow longer. His eyes were as blue as hers, his mouth much too wide and his nose looked as if it had been broken and badly repaired. He must have been in Malta quite a while as he was very tanned.