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

by Ursula Bloom

  She began drawing on her gloves, the cotton kind that she bought from Mr. Azzopardi in Strada Mercanti, and haggled over to the last farthing. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘as I can be of no possible use now, you will let me know when I can come round and be helpful, or something …’ and she got up with a defiant air.

  3

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve offended her,’ said Dinah, ‘though I don’t see that it really matters. After all, the first few moments when you meet your fiancé whom you intend marrying to-morrow, are a bit important. Too precious to waste on a clergyman’s wife, however well-intentioned.’

  ‘She’s been awfully nice,’ said Piers regretfully.

  He knew that they had made a mistake and that it would now be spread round Malta. At this precise moment Mrs. James in Strada Reale was going into details of the visit with a couple of Commanders’ wives, who happened to see her too late to make good their escape.

  ‘I’ve seen the bride. Quite extraordinary, quite extraordinary. I don’t believe her first husband would ever have regretted that shooting accident, if it was an accident!’

  ‘Now,’ said Dinah, ‘now that we are alone at last, do let’s go and see the flat. I’m a bit interested in where I am going to live.’

  ‘You’re not too tired?’

  ‘Of course I’m not too tired.’

  The flat was situated the other side of Strada Mezzodi, and from its long windows there was a view of Sliema harbour, with the destroyers lying there, and Sliema opposite, and the rise for the Citta Vecchian hills to the left. The flat was cool. There was no hall, for the door opened into the spacious living-room, with stone floor and windows that ran right round it, so that from one side Sliema harbour was visible, and from another the clover fields, beginning to turn to purple, and the little low Notabile hills rising beyond. Below was a courtyard, so unlike the courtyard at Dukeleys that it made Dinah catch her breath. No jasmine here, but the long green ribbons of a banana palm waving in the evening breeze, and a little Judas tree, parasol-shaped, and pink with blossom. There was a bed thick with clove-scented stocks in the pink and white of old-fashioned flannelette.

  ‘Piers, it is too lovely!’

  The furniture was simple, and there was no surplus. Jade green curtains, and a couple of off-white easy chairs, with a sofa. There was a round table made low, and beyond another room arranged for meals. This led into a largish bedroom, and a most opulent-looking bathroom. The maid’s room was off the kitchen, which seemed to be surprisingly small and gave Dinah doubts as to whether a reputable maid would ever stay for long in it.

  ‘Oh, a Maltese maid will,’ said Piers with assurance.

  ‘But surely they’re human?’

  ‘Or almost.’

  ‘Piers, how funny you are about them! I hardly know you in this mood. Is it that you don’t like them?’

  He stood there with his arm lying lightly around her. ‘My pretty, the old Maltoosh doesn’t interest me, because I am so used to him. You interest me, you always will. Don’t let’s talk about the Malts, but about one another. Darling, I do love you so.’

  She would never forget this moment, with the new background of flat and courtyard, with the strange view beyond the windows of a little island that once she had thought dour. She kissed Piers again and again, and he said unbelievably lovely things, and she was happy. She was sure that she had never been so happy before.

  Afterwards they went out into the Hastings Gardens, where the geraniums grew raggety, and the palms were very still. Piers lifted her on to the ramparts, and she sat there, watching the sun drop swiftly behind the hills. Then the darkness equally swiftly, with no twilight; one moment the day, the next the night.

  ‘If you like, darling, we’ll stay at Citta Vecchia. That is if you really don’t want to go to Taormina?’

  ‘I would like that,’ she said.

  Next morning they were married.

  Dinah would not have chosen this wedding with Mrs. James hovering over her, gloating over it and reminding her of some vulture, which hopes afterwards to partake of a feast. They went to the hotel and had cocktails there with an attempt at festivity, but Dinah was only thinking of the moment when she could get Piers alone, and the real honeymoon would start. These others were merely witnesses, she hated the fact that they could trespass when she wanted so much to be alone with him. Mrs. James trying to be pleasantly indulgent and to say the right thing. A naval officer friend of Piers, and his wife, one known familiarly as Old Jeff, the other as Janet Ann.

  It seemed to last an interminable time, this overbrightness, the drinks, people trying to say the right thing, and feel wedding-y when it wasn’t in the least like the ordinary wedding. Then it was over, and she and Piers were in one of the big pregnant-looking cars together, driving to Citta Vecchia, leaving the dust of Valletta behind them. They came out of the city to Floriana, then on to the fields with castellated houses and the dusty green fig trees at the roadside, and the clover fields puce-purple with blossom.

  ‘Happy, darling?’

  ‘Awfully happy.’ She touched his hand affectionately. ‘I was thinking of the people at home. I don’t want to tell them we are married yet, because they wouldn’t understand. It would worry Mother, and Father would laugh. Let’s cable them later.’

  ‘So that they think you came out here, met me by chance, I proposed on the first afternoon and we got spliced the next morning?’

  ‘That is the idea,’ she agreed. ‘I did send a cable to Aunt Lydia, because after all she thought of it. She may be blunt, but she is a brick.’

  ‘She deserved that,’ he answered; ‘but don’t let’s talk about them. Let’s forget everybody else save our two selves, let the whole world go.’

  ‘That ought to be easy in a world so new to me,’ she said.

  They stayed in a tiny hotel, which was on the outskirts of Citta Vecchia and could give them two private rooms. A vine peered unashamedly in at the windows, and clung about an iron balustrade which bulged. In the mornings they sat on the balcony for breakfast and saw the island spread before them in a panorama of clover fields and rectangular houses, with the sea clasping it, and the statue of St. Paul gleaming whitely on his island.

  ‘Do you think St. Paul was ever really shipwrecked here?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t the remotest idea. I don’t know enough about it to say if he was ever really shipwrecked anywhere. Still, that’s my ignorance.’

  ‘And the cave? Do you think he really preached there?’

  ‘I’ll take you to see it and you shall judge for yourself. Only you must not spout any of your heresies there. The Maltoosh lives for St. Paul. He is bread to their hunger, and don’t you dare to deprive him of it!’

  They went down to the cave together and she remembered that Max had visited it that last time when the cruise ship had put in to the island. She saw an axe lying against the stone wall, just as Max had said, and the figure of St. Paul with his finely sculptured hands, and his tender compassionate eyes. The guide invited her to take a piece of the wall away with her. He stood leaning against it, indicating the axe with a wave of long expressive fingers, and smelling excruciatingly of garlic.

  ‘It heals,’ he said.

  It was all very well for Piers to stand there laughing and joking with the guide, who responded amusedly to him. Dinah thought of that healing stone and it recalled a vivid memory; the memory was a scar that refused to heal. Max had been so kind to her that day, and had wanted to make her happy. She thought of the kimono embroidered in gold, and the pearl crucifix, and his tenderness to her. He ought not to have died, and she tried to dismiss her memories as quickly as she could. Piers had always insisted that it was an accident; the coroner, the doctor, in fact everybody who had had anything to do with it, had told her that there was no question of suicide about it. Surely she ought to be satisfied with their decision and forget her own doubts?

  Piers was still laughing and teasing the guide, and the guide with the amiability of a
ll the Maltese was taking it in very good part, giggling and shrugging his shoulders and waving his expressive hands. Neither of them had noticed Dinah.

  ‘Well, you’d better take a piece. Comes in useful when you have toothache,’ said Piers.

  ‘I don’t want it.’ She was surprised to hear that her own tone was so sharp.

  ‘Darling, what on earth is the matter?’ He looked at her like a child who is amazed to find a grown-up suddenly angry and for no reason.

  She could only say that she was sorry. She could not possibly explain the curious feeling that she had had, and anyway she could not expect him to understand it.

  Afterwards, when they came up the steps into the daylight with the scent of the honeysuckle climbing over a passage-way into a garden beyond, she took his arm, tucking her own hand into it. ‘I’m sorry, Piers, I did not mean that.’

  ‘It seemed funny that you should fly off the handle, when I’d done nothing.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Please try to forget it.’

  He eyed her suspiciously, not knowing what to make of her, and feeling uncertain of the next move. She pressed his hand. ‘I know it sounded horrid; you see, it reminded me of something in the past, something you couldn’t possibly know about. Please try to forget it.’

  ‘All right.’

  For a little while he went quiet, then throwing it off he changed again, because it was not easy for Piers to remain angry for long. They went into a cafe for tea, sitting out on the veranda, with innumerable flies buzzing round them, but the scent from white trumpet flowers in the garden was something so perfect that she forgot about the flies.

  ‘Piers, I love you so much.’

  ‘I never thought being in love could be so heavenly. I adore you.’

  She said, ‘I sent my cable home to-day, and told them that we are getting married. Mother won’t grasp it, and Father’s reactions depend entirely on how his affair with Esther stands at the moment.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry. When you see them again in a couple of years or so, they’ll have had time to get over their surprise, and won’t even mention it. They’ll have changed.’

  They would have changed. She thought in horror of life being portioned in helpings. Three years here, three years there, Naval lives being cut like a cake, and handed out in so many slices. She did not know that she liked the idea. She would be almost twenty-eight when she got home, and twenty-eight seemed perilously near to thirty. She would be so much older, they would be older too; she did not care for the system of Naval commissions.

  ‘It seems such a queer way of dividing life up.’

  ‘I think it’s rather a good way. You see a lot for your money. Join the navy and see the world.’

  The essence of the trumpet flowers came in at the window. She said, ‘Yes, there’s something in that. See the world. It is such a beautiful world too. The people in England don’t know how beautiful,’ and again she went quiet.

  4

  They came back to Valletta and she believed that she had been away for an eternity, though really it was only a few days. The honeymoon was apart from anything else that had ever been in her life, and now she was returning to reality and afraid of it.

  Mrs. James had put flowers in the flat, which was good of her, but she was the type of woman who only succeeds in making one resent her goodness. Ginni was installed, round-faced, olive-skinned, with somnolent eyes and a pleasant smile. If she was a rogue, she was a genial, kindly rogue, which is always forgiveable. Ginni liked having a new mistress with pretty clothes; she was prepared to do any amount of work for nominal wages, and she considered that she had a right to her ‘perks’ in marketing. According to Ginni’s category of what was and was not right, this was perfectly fair, and quite unlike stealing, which it would certainly be if she appropriated her mistress’s frocks.

  ‘But nowadays the maids’ wages are too heavy,’ said Piers; ‘Admirals’ wives got here and spoilt the market, curse them! All the Malts are spoilt now.’

  ‘I think Ginni is very cheap.’

  ‘You wait till you see the housekeeping bills! That’s where she’ll get her own back.’

  ‘She won’t, because I shall do my own housekeeping.’

  He laughed at that, flinging his head back and laughing uproariously, which was his rather young and very attractive way. ‘Quite impossible. Ginni will go to the market for you and get everything. That means that only Ginni will do you. If you go yourself, every Malt in the market will do you. You leave it all to Ginni.’

  Going deeper into the matter, Dinah found that he was perfectly correct. Ginni haggled and bought veal, and dendichi, and groceries, at a more or less reasonable price, charging a trifle more as commission for her trouble.

  ‘But that’s cheating,’ said Dinah.

  ‘My pretty, no. It’s just the way of this part of the world. Quite fair, I can assure you.’

  On the last morning of their honeymoon Piers had to rejoin his ship. They had coffee together early and then he went down to the Customs House steps to catch the eight o’clock boat. I’ll walk down with him every morning, Dinah had promised herself, but although the going down was easy, she found that it was a severe drag coming back. It was exquisite going down the cutting together, with the bastions on either side rising tall and grey, and the Judas trees and oleanders in rosy flower. But it was very tedious coming back, and she was more tired than she had thought she would be when she got back to the flat.

  Ginni welcomed her at the door, announcing that the work of the house was already done, which meant that it had received the casual flick of a palm broom, which was Ginni’s idea of a ‘good clean-up’. The marketing had been done as well. She showed no surprise at Dinah’s exhaustion.

  ‘It is much so,’ said she. ‘Our climate is not very niceness at first. It makes the tiredness,’ and she helped Dinah on to the bed, so that she might rest.

  It was cool and comforting there, with the jade curtains fluttering in the wind, and the heat seemed to lie beyond the shutters, and not to penetrate into the room.

  The milk boy called haleeb in the street, the voices and the laughter echoed, and there was the sound of the goats’ bells, and the jangle of those other eternal bells of Malta which call the faithful to prayer at the most inconvenient moments.

  This room was full of youth. It was a different background from the one which had epitomised her life with Max, the dignity at Hampstead or the tranquillity of the cottage which they had furnished together. She had loved the cottage, but not as she was going to love this flat; a monkey jacket sprawled across the back of a chair, its sleeves hanging limply; there was a litter against her own hair-brushes on the dressing-table; links with a naval crown, studs, the absurdly ordinary little brushes which Piers insisted on using, because he had had them at school and had developed a loyal affection for them.

  If only she were not so tired …

  5

  By eleven she had recovered enough to be called for by Mrs. James and escorted to the ‘Snakery’ in Strada Reale, which was the ungallant name for the ladies’ club. Here the senior officers’ wives sat in groups, surveying the younger and gayer junior officers’ wives. Here whispering campaigns were started. Mrs. James gave herself airs. It was certain that she was not a senior officer’s wife, but it was a consoling thought that in processions the Church was entitled to walk next to the King, and ahead of either army or navy.

  She pointed people out to Dinah, giving potted histories, not entirely to their credit. She missed nothing. She introduced innumerable people who wore naval crowns as brooches, and Mary Bugeja’s silk as frocks. They seemed to be very much alike. Dinah new that she would never recognise them again, which would possibly give dire offence.

  ‘You have to make mental notes about them; it doesn’t help your husband’s promotion if you cut his Admiral’s wife or something,’ said Mrs. James, with the air of instructing the wilful young.

  There was Mrs. White only recently come out from Engla
nd, whose husband had a ‘big ship,’ which was apparently the thing to have. There was Janet Ann without Old Jeff; she gave Dinah a nod and a smile, but was busy with her own set. There was Lady Silkington, whose husband was a famous Admiral known as Flitterby Silkington, because of his unfortunate hobby of collecting butterflies.

  ‘It’s awful of me,’ said Dinah, ‘perhaps it’s the heat or the change of air or something, but I do feel so ill.’

  Mrs. James glanced at her in alarm. ‘I suppose you aren’t starting Mediterranean fever?’

  ‘I don’t know what Mediterranean fever is.’

  ‘Newcomers seem to get a touch of it. It makes you feel dreadful, faint, and sick and queer. If you went back and rested, it would be a good thing, because it is one of those complaints you can’t play tricks with. Ginni would see after you. I’d lie down, or something …’

  ‘Perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea.’

  She wasn’t being a success, but the Snakery failed to hold her interest in this particular mood. She wanted to get home. She felt appallingly weak when she got up, whilst Mrs. James, still chattering glibly, took her arm. She was now giving advice as to the right doctor to have. Really there were only two in the island; Dr. Lewis, whom you could not possibly have because he was always drunk, and Mr. Simkins, who was quite good when he tried, but from all accounts did not try very often.

  They went down the stone steps together, through the narrow little doorway into the street. It struck Dinah as being particularly glaring and bright, in contrast to the peaceful dimness of the Snakery. She found now that she clung closer to Mrs. James’s arm with the growing feeling that her legs would give way under her. A Maltese, running a kiosk of flowers, raised his hat politely and seized this unpromising moment to press red roses on her; she could hardly see them.

  ‘I say,’ said Mrs. James, ‘do you think you ought to take a carrozzi? You do seem rather ill.’

  Mentally she wondered if this were not something queer. She did hope for everybody’s sake that there was not going to be a nasty scandal, but she couldn’t be quite sure, which was maddening. Dinah’s symptoms were definitely odd.