The Information Officer - Mark Mills

“I say lead the way.”

Monico’s had been an old haunt of theirs during Iris’s brief stint at the Information Office, and a brace of John Collinses brought out a nostalgic streak in her. She insisted on retracing their history, starting with their first meeting at a dance at the Engine Room Artificer’s Club in Floriana. It had been a rowdy affair, and Iris and her two flatmates had been right in the thick of it.

High-kicking his way across a crowded room while singing “Knees Up, Mother Brown” at the top of his lungs would never be Max’s idea of fun, but Freddie had announced to everyone present that he wouldn’t be banging out any more tunes on the piano until Max joined in. It was Iris who had dragged him from his chair into the fray, Iris who had hooked her arm through his and refused to release him until Freddie turned his gifted hands to some Cole Porter numbers.

At the time, Iris was still a member of the Arabian Knights, a concert party made up of six girls and two young men who walked from the hips down. They were one of the more popular outfits on the island, if only because their routines verged on the downright bawdy. What was it about the English that allowed them to find so much humor in men dressing up as women, and vice versa? Hugh would have said that Shakespeare was to blame.

Max had only once seen the Arabian Knights in action; they’d been mostly on the road in an old Scammell truck provided by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI), performing at airfields and forts and remote gun sites. The arrival of the Luftwaffe in Sicily in early ’41 spelled the end of the troupe, the Germans taking over from their Italian allies and teaching them the true meaning of a bombing campaign. Malta shook to a holocaust that left little place for frivolous entertainments, and the Arabian Knights were forced to disband.

Crueler tongues than Max’s had speculated about Charles Headley’s decision to employ Iris at the Information Office. What did Max care if Headley was getting his oil changed in return for offering her a job? She was a performer, fun to have around, and competent enough when it came to reading out the news bulletins for the Rediffusion. Moreover, she hadn’t fled the island when the opportunity to do so had still existed, which suggested a certain commitment to the cause.

Admittedly, there had been something slightly self-serving about this commitment. At the first opportunity, she had left the Information Office for the giddy heights of Fighter Control, but Max had never begrudged her her resourcefulness and ambition. She was a young woman from a tough neighborhood of south London who had pulled herself up by the boot straps, exchanging a sequin-encrusted brassiere for a key job at the heart of the military machine. He knew that the wives of the high-ranking officers with whom she now rubbed shoulders despised her for her pretensions, her efforts to dress more like them and improve her accent—and maybe there was something of the same thinking in their husbands—but as someone who had suffered at the hands of knee-jerk prejudice, Max knew whose side he was on.

His easy companionship with Iris had never been haunted by the spectre of physical attraction. On that score, Max did nothing for her. She had told him as much the day he’d accompanied her and her mangy dog to the blessing of the animals at the church of Santa Maria Vittoriosa.

“I don’t know why. You’re tall and dark and very handsome, and you have perfectly lovely green eyes, but I’m not in the least bit attracted to you.”

“That’s okay, Iris.”

“It’s just the same with Freddie. Something about him leaves me cold.”

“I’m sure he can live with it too.”

Sitting there in Monico’s, Iris ran him through an impressively long list of other men who had managed to stir something in her since they’d last caught up on each other’s news. Her current weakness was a Free French pilot named Henri who had purloined a Latécoère torpedo bomber in north Africa and flown to Malta to join the fight. As ever, she was in love, and this time it was the real thing.

Max waited for her to talk herself to a standstill before making his move.

“Iris, I need your help.”

“My help?”

“It’s a sensitive matter, for your ears only.”

It occurred to him only then just how difficult this might become. For a person bent on reinventing herself, she wasn’t necessarily going to appreciate being reminded of her seamy past.

“What was the name of that place you worked when you first came to Malta?”

He knew the name. And he knew the place. It was still there: an apology for a dance hall just off Strait Street where it dipped away toward Fort Saint Elmo. Like many other girls with a London show or two under their belts, Iris had been lured to Malta before the war with the promise of fame and fortune, only to find herself prancing around a postage-stamp stage for a baying mob of drunk and hormone-fueled sailors.

“Why?” she asked warily.

“I know it’s a world you’ve left behind—and good riddance to it.”

“It wasn’t such a bad life.”

He had heard enough stories from others to know she was stretching the truth.

“Well, maybe it’s got worse. Or maybe it hasn’t. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“And maybe you should spit it out.”

“As I say, it’s probably nothing …”

This was a phrase he kept returning to over the next few minutes. He tried to remain as vague as possible, making out that he was only doing someone else a favor by approaching her. This person—he couldn’t say who exactly, they had asked him not to—was of the feeling that casualty rates were running unnaturally high among the sherry queens of the Gut. He was fumbling his way toward the request when she preempted him.

“You want me to ask around.”

“A few discreet inquiries to some of the people you know—knew. See if there’s any truth in it. As I say, it’s probably nothing.”

“Let me get this straight. You think someone’s killing sherry queens, and you want me to go in there and be discreet?” She seemed amused by the idea, and probably with good reason.

“I don’t think anything.”

“No, that’s right, this ‘person’ thinks someone’s killing sherry queens.” She made no attempt to conceal the heavy irony.

“Iris, look, he doesn’t know anything. He’s just doing his job, making sure. Forget I ever mentioned it, okay?”

He meant it. He should never have approached her with it.

Iris pulled a cigarette from the packet and waited for him to light it for her.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

“Of course I’ll do it,” she said.

IT WASN’T A DIARY. HE HAD ALWAYS DISLIKED THE IDEA of diaries. They smacked of vainglory. What drove people to record the mundane drift of their ordinary lives for posterity’s sake? Did they really think that posterity didn’t have better things to concern itself with?

His scribblings were of an altogether different kind, a loose assemblage of thoughts and impressions and memories laid down for his own benefit. Not to mention the deeds. The deeds were anything but mundane.

He kept only one notebook, and the moment its pages were filled, he destroyed it, ritually, always with fire. He felt no sense of loss at the notebooks’ annihilation. Quite the reverse. He set about despoiling the virgin pages of a fresh notebook with renewed vigor, starting again, telling the story from scratch, reaching back to the very first days.

The years lent a proper perspective. He was continually evolving, and so should the record be.

What did the blinkered musings of some former self—some lesser self—have to offer him? Why revisit the youthful confusion of that long walk home through the rain from Mrs. Beckett’s house? Far better to see it in its proper context, as part of the overarching pattern, a necessary step in his metamorphosis.

If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Beckett, Bad Reichenhall would never have happened. That was the truth of it, the undeniable logic.

Her name was Constanze, and she was a first cousin of Lutz Kettelmann. Blond and voluble, she was also keen to point out that she was a couple of years older than the two boys, although this didn’t stop her from searching out their company at every opportunity. Her haughtiness irritated Lutz, whereas it washed over him. Whenever she talked down to them, which was often, he would simply smile and think of Mrs. Beckett facedown on the bed, her naked rump in the air.

Constanze wasn’t the only reason he looked back on his time at Bad Reichenhall with fondness. He appreciated the routine, the Teutonic order of the place, the almost comical devotion to saltwater cures and vigorous exercise. At that time, Germany was still suffering, but the winds of change were blowing through it, bringing good things to the Kettelmanns and their kind. Breakfast in their hotel was at eight o’clock sharp, and while the brisk and efficient staff buzzed around their long table under the awning on the terrace, Herr Kettelmann would draw up the day’s timetable, marshaling his troops, getting them to repeat their orders so that there would be no unfortunate slipups. Since children were not generally afflicted by the sort of ailments that drew the adults to the waters of Bad Reichenhall every summer, they were spared the morning session in the spa baths. There was to be no idling, though. The surrounding countryside offered any number of opportunities for building up a healthy appetite for lunch. It was an impressive landscape, a landscape of extremes, of soaring pine-clad mountains and deep emerald-green lakes.

Constanze loved to walk, but she loved bathing more, and the three of them spent much of their time at the Thumsee, a lake to the west of town. He had shared many moments with Lutz at Brooklands, but their friendship was forged on the shores of that lake, lazing in the sun and swimming in the crystal-clear waters. Maybe friendship was overstating it, even now, but he could remember feeling anchored by the company, no longer adrift on a boundless sea.

Constanze never once made mention of his father’s death, almost as if she knew that it had left no gaping hole in his life. Once, when Lutz was skimming stones at the water’s edge and he was alone with Constanze on the grassy bank of the lake, she claimed that she could read his thoughts, which he interpreted as meaning that she had felt his eyes on her. He wasn’t embarrassed. Embarrassment was an emotion he no longer experienced. Besides, she was right. It was hard to ignore her, parading about in her costume with her long pale limbs and her high firm breasts. He asked her if she had ever kissed a boy. Of course not, came her indignant reply; she had only ever kissed men. The intended snub fell on deaf ears, and her eyes almost popped out of her head when he told her about Mrs. Beckett. He left out the stuff about blackmailing her into bed, but told it pretty much as it had been. He also asked her not to say anything to Lutz. It was to be their secret.

The ploy worked. The secret festered away over the following days. Constanze was as puffed-up as ever, maybe more so, but he caught the conspiratorial looks she threw his way, and sometimes she brushed against him unnecessarily. Then came the urgent, whispered questions whenever they found themselves alone for a moment. Had he really done it with Mrs. Beckett? Was it really like he had said?

The evening before they were all due to leave Bad Reichenhall, she took him aside and suggested they meet up later after everyone was in bed. She billed it as a last walk to the Thumsee, a final farewell to their lake. Her excuse for not including Lutz in the expedition was that his bedroom adjoined that of his parents, and he was liable to give the game away if he joined them.

It was a warm, balmy night, and a crescent moon lit their path to the lake. They stripped off and swam to the big rock and back. Then they kissed in the shallows and her hand closed uncertainly around him. She gave a small squeal of pain as his hand returned the favor, fingers probing, delving. She released him immediately and made off out of the water, long and lean and ivory-white in the moonlight. He knew that his crude fumblings had killed the moment, but he was damned if he was going to take all the blame. After all, it was she who had lured him there with the promise of greater things.

She was too preoccupied with pulling on her clothes to see him coming. He grabbed her and spun her around and forced his tongue into her mouth. She resisted, of course, even when he told her that he would hurt her if she didn’t stop. Seizing her hair seemed the sensible thing to do, as it would leave no mark. It certainly subdued her enough for him to have his way with her, right there on the grassy rise beside the lake. And while he did it, he told her why he was doing it. After a month of her stuck-up ways, he was not lost for words. The more she tried to twist free of him, the more pleasure he derived from her struggles, a dark and deeply satisfying pleasure he had not felt with Mrs. Beckett. And when it was over, he didn’t thank her and promise his eternal silence, as he had done with Mrs. Beckett. He threatened her with a fate far worse than the one she’d just endured if she ever breathed a word of it.

While they were getting dressed, he took a more reasoned tack, pointing out that it would be her word against his. Even if she persuaded people of the truth, her reputation would still be in tatters. “I understand,” she said. And she seemed to.

The following morning she was at breakfast at eight o’clock sharp, composed, if somewhat more subdued than usual. This was put down to the prospect of returning to Bremen after a glorious month in the Alps.

She had gone on to marry a wealthy corn merchant. He knew this because over the years he had asked after her, and Lutz had filled him in on the dreary details of her life: another child, a new holiday house by the sea, her charity work for the unemployed. Unsurprisingly, the war had restricted these updates, but he still thought of her with something approaching affection. She might not have been the very first, but it was she who had triggered the first stirrings of life in him, she who had set him on the road. He had taken wrong turns, dangerous deviations that had almost proved to be his undoing, but he was wiser now—more cautious, more patient, and far better at covering his tracks.

DAY FOUR

MAX HAD BEEN HOPELESSLY AWAKE FOR HOURS, WRESTLING with the sheet, when the building wail of the siren cut through his thoughts. The windows were shuttered, but a pale dawn light leaked into the bedroom through the crack in the wall. He’d tracked the progress of this jagged fissure over the past month with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. It had set off on its journey from the floor beside the chest of drawers, traveling in fits and starts on a diagonal path toward the ceiling, widening to a hand’s width as it went. At a certain moment it had disappeared behind the only picture in the room—a naïve watercolor of some unidentifiable fruit in a bowl—only to reemerge a week or so later from behind the shell and coral frame and carry on its way.