Uphill All the Way (30 page)

On the third day she took him on the ferry to the lovely, unspoilt, ancient capital city, the citadel of Valletta, pointing out the landmarks as they approached: the steeple of St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral - known as the British Church - the dome of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and the turret of the Grand Master's Palace. The way up into the walled city that hung above them was cruelly steep, but Judith was merciless as she steered him onwards and upwards to one of her favourite spots, the heights of the Upper Barracca Gardens.

There they stared out over the glinting blue splendour of Grand Harbour, watching as far below ant-like passengers disembarked from a towering white cruise boat with it's own swimming pool. Adam gazed silently over the depths of incredible blue to the church domes and bell towers of the three crowded little cities of Vittoriosa, Cospicua and Senglea on the opposite shore, their fingers of land creating the creeks to shelter the clutter and clatter of the docks.

She took him into the city and showed him the central thoroughfare, Republic Street, a particularly pleasant place to shop as no traffic was allowed. The streets were beautifully decorated for the Feast of St Augustine, the
bandalori
or bunting showing the city at its best. They lunched on pasta and calamari at Caffe Cordina in Republic Square, and she told him how in the sixteenth century the Ottoman Turks had laid siege to the Knights of St. John in Valletta, floating dead Knights across the harbour waters in a savage attempt to destabilise the besieged order. And of La Valette, the grandmaster of the time, who gave the grisly order to fire back the heads of Turkish prisoners in brutal response.

They strolled between the golden Baroque buildings along dusty streets so narrow it seemed impossible that they'd survive the cars whipping past them, and others where they felt pretty safe from vehicles because the road was actually a giant flight of steps.

She showed him the city gate in the huge ramparts that had protected the city for so long. They bought cake and ice-cream from stalls standing around the circular bus terminus, and he took photos of her sitting on the coping of The Triton fountain in the middle, laughing, her face dusted with icing sugar and crushed almonds, her ice-cream melting over her fingers.

Judith enjoyed playing tourist with Adam, watching his face as he enjoyed the buildings and the views of the sea to be glimpsed down almost every street. Meanwhile, a family dinner was being prepared at Richard and Erminia's house so that upon their return, Judith's family - her cousins, their spouses and all the children they'd brought into the world - were waiting, surrounding the long table beneath the chandelier in the dining room.

The evening was full of laughter and finger-licking food,
lampuki,
peppers, sausages. Children clambering down from the table between courses to let off steam, Lino and Raymond competing to entertain Adam with unflattering stories about Judith.

It was late when the party broke up and it seemed very quiet once the various arms of the family had returned to their own homes and Richard and Erminia were in bed. Judith and Adam went out to sit in the courtyard among big dusty pot plants, the night air chilly enough that Judith needed her jacket. Adam entertained himself by spotting geckos on the house walls.

And then Judith said, 'Will you be able to look after yourself tomorrow? I have stuff to do.'

Adam placed his hands slowly behind his head and watched the moths battering themselves against the orange light. 'You're beginning your mission?'

'If you want to call it that.'

'And you want to do it alone.'

She frowned as she tried, unsuccessfully, to interpret the odd note in his voice. 'For the moment.'

He rocked his chair, thoughtfully. 'Well, thanks for the last few days. I've enjoyed having you with me.' His tone was polite, and Judith couldn't quite tell whether he was being sarcastic.

They lapsed into silence, and for a while she thought he'd fallen asleep. But then his voice came suddenly. 'How does it feel to be back in Malta?'

'Nice,' she said, carefully.

'Nice,' he repeated, as if he'd never heard the word before.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The sun was getting some real heat into it, making her roll her shoulders in satisfaction beneath the butterscotch yellow cotton of her light shirt as she approached her cousin Raymond's three-year-old blue Peugeot that looked at least three times as old. After a brief tidy up inside the borrowed vehicle, which involved throwing all the papers from the front into the back, she drove cautiously out of Sliema. She'd decided to begin her 'mission', as Adam termed it, by searching out some way to feel close to Giorgio.

It certainly hadn't happened just by coming back to the island, a little to her surprise. Even in Sliema, where both she and Giorgio had lived, her present life intervened. Perhaps because she wasn't in her own apartment. Perhaps because of Adam, she was tuned in to him in the usual, easy way and that might have interfered with the slide back into the past that she'd assumed she'd achieve by coming back. Instead, she felt like a visitor.

On her last visit, the island had seemed full of Giorgio, ringing with his voice, bright with his smile, unbearable without him. Of course, that had been when his loss was so new.

But now... the office was self-evidently running perfectly well without her, and she had the uncomfortable conviction that it would suit Richard and his family if she simply sold out to them. The small hotel venture had proved profitable, the funds were available. Rosaire had taken over her client list.

She knew that if she declared her intention to take up her old position she'd be greeted with nothing less than a warm welcome. But Richard was spending fewer and fewer hours in the office, his children had formed a team of pleasing symmetry without her.

It seemed to her that the issue of the crucifix, though, was not so clear-cut. She was intent on gaining some sense of what she should do. What Giorgio would have wanted. She desperately wanted to do the right thing - whatever that was.

The roads were no quieter than she remembered, and she felt nervous of the lanes of weaving traffic on the regional road as she became reaccustomed to the Malta driving experience. It all seemed uncomfortably rapid and busy after Brinham, which was usually choked up with cars, and therefore slow. Dust blew in through the open car window on a breeze that held a firm edge of heat, auguring the rigours of the summer just beginning. The sun was harsh as it bounced from the pale new limestone blocks of a building under construction, the site hemmed about by other buildings and the road, a precarious-looking crane lorry swinging the large blocks into what would be the building's basement.

Construction in this style was a particularly Maltese skill. A building was cut from between its neighbours, and the site excavated into a yawning hole. She was sure that the occupants of the houses on either side must breathe a sigh of relief when the new building grew to fill it.

Joining the queue of traffic threading past the crane, she began to relax as she left the busier roads behind and reached less crowded residential areas with prickly pear trees lolling over dry stone walls like spiky green Mickey Mouse ears, and actually began to enjoy her drive.

The cemetery, when she parked the car, was enjoying an early morning peace, the flower sellers still setting out their wares on the sloping car park. Stepping through the tall, decorative gates, she had no trouble remembering to take the left avenue, uphill under the pine trees to the Zammit family plot. Her previous visit was pretty well scorched into her memory.

But having searched it out, she came to an uncertain halt before the monument.

Nobody was there to observe her, but still, somehow, she felt like an uninvited guest. Perhaps because she could imagine the fury of Maria and Agnello Zammit if her visit happened to coincide with one of theirs!

The plot was tidy. Fresh white and yellow flowers stood in a central vase. A new plaque had been created before the older ones, pale compared to their deeper tones, and an oval photograph of Giorgio making her flinch. It looked like the photograph that appeared at the back of his tour company's brochure.

Giorgio Zammit

1962-2003

RIP

Her stomach hollowed. Already it was almost a year since the accident in the twinkling waters of Ghar Lapsi. At the other end of the summer it would be a year since his death. She would be
another
year older than Giorgio as he lay here alone, the flowers nodding in the breeze, the still carving of the angel standing guard.

After a further brief glance about her, Judith lowered herself to the floor. She sat cross-legged, propping her forehead on her fist and closing her eyes, preparing to remember Giorgio, to feel close to him, talk to him in her head, as she used to. Tap into the grief from the familiar point of lament.
If only I'd been there...

If she had been there to keep him safe, she thought, struggling to keep her eyelids shut in the inappropriately cheerful sunshine, she'd have a completely different life now - presumably - her old life, living in Malta with Giorgio.

She interrupted herself. Those should be two separate statements.

She would still be living in Malta.

She would still be 'with' Giorgio. Behind closed doors.

Letting her eyes open, she gazed at the flowers, having difficulty losing herself in mental images of
if only
. Perhaps it always was difficult to envisage one life when living another? And having accepted Giorgio as being dead for some time now, it made it difficult to imagine him alive.

But she was back in Malta, specific things had brought her back, and she'd come here to focus on one of them. Fishing in her bag, she brought out Giorgio's crucifix. It gleamed in the palm of her hand, some of its lustre lost now that it was no longer worn every day against warm skin. She closed her eyes again, reaching out determinedly to Giorgio with her mind.

What am I supposed to do with this
?

She tried again with less impatience.
Cass gave me this so I'd have something of you. And now I don't know what to do, because Alexia says it's hers.
The memory of her conversation with Giorgio's daughter intruded. There had been positive dislike in the young woman's tone, and no chord in common with Giorgio.

She sighed. She so badly wanted to do the right thing about the crucifix, the right thing by Giorgio's daughter. She just wished she knew what that right thing was. Maybe she should have let Adam come with her, as he'd so obviously wanted to, because Adam was such a rock in a crisis.

All she'd had since she met him was one crisis after another. He must be used to coping with them by now.

For goodness' sake, she wasn't meant to be thinking about Adam!

Pushing herself to her feet, she brushed glumly at the dust and dead pine needles that now coated her jeans, dropping the crucifix into her bag, feeling foolish over sitting cross-legged like some old hippy and attempting to gauge the opinions of a dead man. An insect had bitten her ankle into a white lump with a pink halo, and it itched already.

She tucked in with the other flowers the single orange gerbera she'd bought at the gate. It blazed out from the tasteful, muted whites and yellows. She hesitated. When his family brought fresh flowers, they'd surely notice this floral stranger.

Oh, let them.

It was unlikely to be Johanna, she hadn't even liked her husband.

If it were his children or his parents... well, they'd just have to accept that she'd loved him, too, no matter how they'd frowned.

I wish I knew what to do.

She swung away down the hill, legs like pendulums, to climb back into the hot interior of Raymond's car, disappointment and dissatisfaction creeping up on her like a scudding black cloud. Only Giorgio's name remained at Santa Maria Addolorata Cemetery, inscribed upon a plaque. And the posed photograph that would keep him smiling and forever forty-one.

She thrust the car into gear and drove away.

Ghar Lapsi was an area of outstanding beauty by the standard of any nation.

Sauntering along the cliff top from the car park, Judith made for the same slab of rock where she'd waited out the day of Giorgio's funeral. She squinted past the glitter of the sun, almost too much for the eyes, at a red fishing boat and the dark shape of the rock of Filfla. The oilrigs still cluttered up the horizon to her left, standing gawkily in the distance like a prehistoric monster.

She shaded her eyes to search the green, frothing sea. Then she wandered back to the steps and made the descent to the foreshore.

She passed no one on the way, but there were a couple of families at the restaurant at the bottom. A pretty waitress with melting brown eyes and a ready smile brought her cappuccino, and she watched the waves from a green chair on the terrace, as she drank. Substantial waves, today, thrashing the shore. Divers would be foolhardy to go down, the rip would carry them away or fling them against rock without warning. Smash, dash, flip, tumble, hold you down, drag you out into angry, jade-green depths. The sea had a soft belly but a hard head, as the Maltese said, and only the incautious went down when it was so restless.