Dinah's Husband: A heartfelt story of love and marriage in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  It seemed but a few hours later that they were approaching Malta itself.

  She had hoped that it would be at night, but it was in the afternoon that the ship, slackening speed, turned into Valletta harbour. The walls were so old and grey that watching them they struck her with her own youth and foolishness. They reared themselves in ramparts on either side. A bougainvillea trailed in crimson and purple across the arches of the Upper Barracca, arches that she had only seen before as hoops through which the stars shone, in the misty evening last time. There was the white glare, which made her eyes ache, and turning from it she saw the big ships at anchor, painted palely in silver-grey, the hallmark of the Mediterranean Fleet.

  One of them was Piers’.

  The island was not dour, it was not dark; it was bright now with a flashing brilliance which hurt her eyes; it was like a cluster of stars. Now she could not think how it was that she had not felt drawn to it before; now she must be in the right mood, for she saw it in its full beauty. The ship’s anchor went rattling down, and the dghaisas came alongside with officials and mendicants, and the insistent sellers of sponges, canaries, and lace. A couple of small picket boats put out from the big ships, and she knew that Piers would be in one of them. He had cabled to her on board that they would be married the day after she arrived!

  She stood there watching the picket boats coming rapidly nearer, with two thousand miles behind her, and only a narrowing strip of water between her and Piers.

  To-morrow they would be married. Her first wedding had not been like this one, it had been merely the doorway to an epoch; nothing more. Aunt Lydia had been quite right when she had said that Dinah was only an old man’s darling! She had never been his wife. That was all over and done with, and the old man himself a distant memory, fleeting, flickering, fading like a shadow in the brilliance of a sunshine that was vigorous and strong. None of the past mattered any more.

  What was it Max had said about a ghost?

  So much nonsense, she told herself as she watched the picket boat coming alongside, with the blue jackets standing to attention, and the Midshipman at the wheel. There were no ghosts here, nothing but a sweet reality.

  She heard Piers coming on to the deck and before she actually saw him, she knew that he was near. Then turning she met him looking at her, and knew that although she had thought of him many times, she had never remembered him as being so good-looking as he really was, nor so dear.

  ‘Piers!’

  ‘My pretty! My Dinah!’

  Quite unabashed he kissed her before everybody. She had planned so often what she would say when they met, now words failed her, perhaps because there were no words that could do justice to the emotion.

  ‘Piers, I could not have lived without you a day longer.’

  ‘I know. I know. Thank God you cut the time limit down.’

  ‘And you’ve got everything fixed?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘I can’t think what my people will say. They know nothing about this at the moment, just that I’ve come on a cruise. They don’t suspect anything either; then I suppose they never have been really interested in me.’

  ‘We’ll tell them when it is all over. It was your Aunt Lydia’s idea, I suppose? I always thought she knew which side to butter bread. Now where’s the luggage?’

  There was the shore-going crowd surging past them and the stewards busying themselves with the departing guests and the prospect of tips, and ready with lists to tick off the newly-embarking passengers.

  ‘What do I do next, Piers?’

  ‘Come down the gangway, where you’ll find the boat is waiting.’

  It was unreal, she could hardly believe that she was not dreaming it. Life with Max had not prepared her for this. It had run in smooth easy strides, but it had been an old man’s life, and she had been prematurely aged by it. This was youth, and she found an entrancing delirium in youth.

  They went ashore, still all unreal, still like a dream. In a carrozzi, under the shadow of an old wall, a driver flicked flies off his angular horse with an indolent grace. The horse was decked in tassels and plumes, and the grotesquely gaudy trappings which suit a bizarre fancy.

  ‘Carrozzi, signor?’

  ‘No fear!’

  Piers put Dinah into a big car, of the kind which was long ago old-fashioned in England but considered to be the latest thing out here. It bulged like a pregnant woman. The driver, olive-skinned and languorous-eyed, touched his hat, shot in the gears with complete disregard of the health of the car, and started in a wild dash up the hill.

  ‘The fish market is on your right. You can probably smell it! Malta’s all bells and smells. I dare say you have heard that one before,’ said Piers. ‘It is a queer little place, but you get damned fond of it. Funny, but you do.’

  ‘I’m sure I shall. What are our plans?’

  ‘I’m taking you to a hotel for the night. The padre’s wife, Mrs. James, will help you, and we are to be married to-morrow, very quietly. Then we can do whatever you wish. Would you like to go to Taormina? Most people go from here to Taormina for their honeymoons; it is handy and they have lots of red roses and Saracens’ graves, though I’m damned if I know what they are to do with honeymooning.’

  She said, ‘I got tired of the sea coming out. I’d rather stay here. Couldn’t we find somewhere to stay in Malta?’

  ‘There isn’t anywhere here where you could stay, save in Valletta; we’d be falling over people we knew all the time, and it would be a bit awkward.’

  ‘Isn’t there somewhere else in the island?’

  ‘I’m hanged if I know. I made a safe bet on Taormina. I’ll see what I can do. The island is a bit primitive, Valletta is all right, Citta Vecchia is moderately all right, but on the whole it is a queer little place.’

  She was staring out at the street as the car climbed the hill, losing speed whilst the man ground in the gears. ‘Where do all the priests come from? And why do the girls look like nuns?’

  ‘That’s because they wear the faldetta. It’s a vow somebody started for a hundred years; then they found that it saved them so much in hats that they have stuck to it ever since.’

  The car rounded the corner with a jerk and swung into Strada Reale, far busier than Main Street, Gibraltar, with a gay air of commercial confusion. Indians basked in the doorways. There was an air of barter about everything. They turned rapidly to the right, down a shady side street which was narrow and had few shops, and stopped with a jerk at the hotel.

  ‘My luggage, Piers, what about my luggage?’

  ‘You needn’t worry. That’ll turn up all right.’

  Dinah went inside the hotel. Its entrance was small, rather dim, but after the dazzling brightness of the street the shade was very acceptable. There were palms, and purple and prune cinerarias in pots; the flagged floors led into a lounge spread in patterned mosaic. For a moment it struck her as being extraordinary that there were no carpets. People sat about with a complete indifference to the passing of time, or to the necessity for exercise.

  Piers led the way upstairs to the bedroom which had been prepared for her. That also was stone-floored, but was laid with drugget mats in presumably convenient spots. It was like the refectory of some old abbey. There were niches in which she imagined icons had once stood; she could visualise it as it would have been if lit by the rosy illumination of a single light. It had the atmosphere of crucifix and sacred statue, and was more unlike a bedroom than any place that she had ever seen. Yet here was the bed, swathed with mosquito netting, the big cavernous wardrobe, the dressing-table with a mottled glass, and the windows wide on to the street where the yellow sunshine splashed so gaudily on to the white wall.

  She went and looked out. Below in the hot little street, one of the ubiquitous priests chatted with a pimply lay brother. One wore the black-and-white habit, and the hard black hat, the other was in brown, with a new white rope round his middle, and his head shaved to the sun.

  ‘It seems t
o be all priests,’ she said.

  ‘Bless your heart, my pretty, every family puts a son into the priesthood; it’s expected of them.’

  ‘Rather a dull life for them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, they’re not so celibate as all that. You should just hear our messman, who is a Malt! Every time that he comes back from the summer cruise he has another child. I said to him, “You damn’ well tell the priest about your missis’s goings-on.” He said, “What I do, sair? He knows.” Very awkward, I must say, but men must live, I suppose.’ He came closer. ‘Don’t let’s talk about Malta, darling, let’s talk about ourselves. We are so frightfully important to one another.’

  ‘I know, Piers, I know. The past is dead.’

  ‘Quite dead. Never even the echo of a passing bell; and wouldn’t you have it this way? This is the beginning of living, my pretty, the beginning of everything.’

  She said, ‘Yes,’ but shyly.

  2

  The padre’s wife came round after tea, which seemed to be a peculiarly mixed meal, with no real relationship to the meal in England. Most of the hotel residents took lime and lemon, or coffee, or a refreshing drink made chiefly of Eno’s fruit salt. Piers explained that the only really English tea you could get was at Brackley’s, but it would be such a fag going out, when all they wanted was one another, and tea didn’t really matter. They sat in a corner and talked, indifferent to the others already there. Flying officers, Naval officers and Marines were sitting about. The Flying officers were rather noisy, the Navy was at ease, and the Marines had that Mother’s-good-boy look which R.M. captains seem to think necessary for the proper drilling of all young marine faces.

  Mrs. James came in. She was angular and she was an unfortunate sufferer from broken veins. These were the first two things that Dinah noticed, and felt that she must be a cat to see them so clearly. Small, pinched, with a cheap frock made of Maltese linen, not renowned for its uncrushable qualities, but undeniably cheap if you haggled long enough.

  Mrs. James was one of those women who take life very seriously, regardless of the fact that life took her as a joke. She felt that Dinah must be in need of mothering, even though she might be a widow, because all brides needed mothering; men were so awful! She had no illusions about the stronger sex. She had asked her husband about Dinah’s widowhood. But she told herself that Cedric had no sense. That was obvious when he had chosen to become a Naval chaplain, which meant heavy travelling expenses and very little to live on. They would have been far better off in a comfortable living, with a proper stipend, and a garden where they could have made a little keeping chickens, or a glebe, or something. ‘Or something’ was the way that she usually ended her sentences. ‘Something’ vaguely, which might cover everything.

  She gathered that Dinah had only been recently widowed, and that her husband had been a very old man. A little further enquiry had provided the information that Dinah had married him when she was very young. Mrs. James sniffed at that, and admitted that it biased her somewhat. It was an odd fact that rich old men could always marry, whilst poor old men couldn’t. It implied but one logical deduction, girls were willing to sell their youth for a bank balance, which was disgusting. Mrs. James felt more strongly than some on this point, because a rich uncle from whom she had had expectations had, when seventy, suddenly married a flighty bit from a chorus, known to the others as ‘Buddy’, but she had been no buddy of Mrs. James, whom she had successfully done out of every farthing.

  Therefore she was predisposed against Dinah.

  ‘I don’t think you should be,’ said her husband, who had never been noted for his tact but excused its lack by an abundant kind heart. ‘Her husband died in a shooting accident, which must have been very dreadful for her. She has had her cup of trouble.’

  ‘Do you mean that he shot himself or something?’ asked his wife tartly.

  ‘Not at all! I only meant to explain to you that she really has been through rather a bad time, and must have suffered a great deal. Grant told me that it happened last autumn.’

  ‘Oh! So he was in it too?’

  ‘He happened to be staying in the same village with the local incumbent. She was very distressed over it all.’

  ‘Oh!’ said his wife again, obviously not impressed.

  Men are always so much more interested in pitiful pictures of little women bending over defunct husbands, than in recognising the truth. Wives generally scent the truth.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it is a good thing that he didn’t shoot himself.’

  It had been Cedric’s suggestion that she should see after Dinah, who was a young bride, and all young brides were shy.

  ‘She has been married before,’ said Mrs. James.

  ‘Yes, but this is rather different. Coming out here to a strange country, and so soon after her shocking loss, she needs to have a woman with her.’

  As Cedric was so set upon it, and as she also was definitely curious about Dinah, Mrs. James had come round. She suspected Dinah. First of all she suspected her for having married an old man, and undoubtedly having availed herself of his exchequer. She thought it was ‘queer’. She was suspicious of the short lapse of time between the shooting accident and Dinah’s arrival in Malta, which she felt was in the worst taste. Lastly, she had always considered that Piers was the best-looking officer in the ship, and she envied Dinah. Mrs. James was a plain woman, she had never been pretty and never would be; what was even worse, she had never had the money to make the most of her plainness. She had nursed this bitter grievance against life, holding it close to her heart. She would have liked to go to the Marsa on race days dressed by Paquin. She would have liked to look distinguée, even if she couldn’t look beautiful, and she could do neither.

  She saw Dinah sitting in the hotel lounge, lovely by nature and beautifully dressed, and the envious soul of Mrs. James burned feverishly. It was so hard that some had everything, and others had nothing, and a good deal harder that she was destined to be one of the others.

  ‘Here I am,’ she said, advancing into the hotel lounge, with the palms, and the cinerarias, and the faint alluring essence of gin and lime lying over it all.

  Dinah’s heart sank and she took an instinctive dislike to the woman who had thin lips set in a mottled face, and who wore this incongruous frock of strange linen. Piers, on the other hand, seemed to be delighted to see her. Following Mr. James’s suggestion he had persuaded Mrs. James to ‘mother’ Dinah.

  Mrs. James sat down uncomfortably, and accepted tea. She warned Dinah against the badness of Malta, the gayness of the younger set, and the notorious cattiness of the ladies’ club in Strada Reale. She told her about the pitfalls of getting to know the wrong people, and so blocking the way effectively to knowing the right people later on. Naval etiquette was strict, and one had to conform to it. Dinah needed somebody to see her through it and teach her the ropes, and Mrs. James was the somebody.

  ‘But I have Piers,’ said Dinah.

  ‘You’ll need a woman. They all do. A woman who has experience, because Malta isn’t a bit like England.’

  ‘I know. It’s lovely. Are the Maltese nice?’

  Such ignorance blew Mrs. James sky high. It was quite undesirable to be interested in the Maltese, she said, and nobody could be without incurring the risk of grave displeasure from the powers-that-be. It would be extremely foolish to express interest before people who did not understand that Dinah was ignorant about the island (Mrs. James inferred that it was all right for her, because she did understand and would naturally never repeat such an unfortunate remark); but whatever happened Dinah must not be interested in the Maltese.

  ‘But I am,’ said Dinah with disarming brightness.

  She did not see why she should be dictated to. She had not liked Mrs. James from the moment when she had seen her coming into the lounge. Mrs. James had not liked Dinah either, and was now quite certain that her first conclusions had been right. This girl was a designing widow, one of the kind that constantly infe
sted the island and were labelled ‘fishing fleet’ in large telltale letters. Undoubtedly her husband had been wise to have that unfortunate accident, if accident it were, and already she was dubious. A scandal squirmed into the heart of Mrs. James, like a grub into the white crisp heart of a large cabbage. Mrs. James had the cabbage mind, and like all cabbages it was liable to grubs.

  ‘You have fixed the ceremony for to-morrow?’ she asked. ‘I wondered if you would like to come down and take a little peep at the church, or something?’

  ‘I was taking Dinah along afterwards myself,’ said Piers. He had wanted to show her the church by himself. It wasn’t that he was religiously minded, honestly he did not know what he believed in, but he felt that there was something especially sacred about this particular church, because it was the one where they would be married.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Mrs. James. ‘I only thought …’

  She needn’t have troubled to come along at all, she told herself, she wasn’t the slightest use, and she did not believe that they really wanted her. To think that she had had to wait so long for the Sliema ferry, and had been so pushed about! Then when she had got to Valletta there had been no carrozzi, and she had had to toil along, very hot, and very dusty. All for nothing, she decided, it was really most disgraceful.

  ‘I can show you the right shops to shop at and the right prices to pay,’ she suggested, ‘and you’ll be wanting a Maltese servant, of course; there is a nice girl called Ginni, but then they’re all called Ginni. I reserved her for you in case you had not made any arrangements. This one doesn’t steal more than most, and she is moderately trained.’

  ‘I’d like to see her,’ said Dinah.

  ‘I can arrange that, and will have her at your flat when you come back from Taormina.’

  ‘I don’t know that we are going to Taormina,’ said Piers, ‘because Dinah has decided that she wishes to stay in the island.’

  Mrs. James smiled tolerantly. It was the thin supercilious smile of an indulgent adder. She said, ‘Dear me, what an extraordinary idea! What a very extraordinary idea!’