Uphill All The Way

by Sue Moorcroft

  'About time.' His voice came from the doorway. 'I was going to wake you, if only to check that I hadn't killed you.' Dressed already in black jeans and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he'd brought her a late morning brunch of ham, cheese and crusty bread, with tea in two of Erminia's pretty butterfly-strewn mugs.

  She laughed, hoisting herself up against the headboard, letting the dawn-pink cotton covers fall to her waist. 'I thought I stood up to the action pretty well. It wasn't me who had to leap out of bed and cavort about the room because of cramp!'

  'No, I suppose somebody was needed to stay in bed and giggle.' He leant forward and kissed her naked breast, his lips hot.

  She caught the back of his head, stroking his hair into his neck. 'Come back to bed. I promise never to giggle again.'

  Slowly, he freed himself, kissed the corners of her mouth and smiled, crookedly. 'Jude, if I get into bed with you again, I might never get out. And I don't want you to think that all I'm good for is no-strings sex.'

  He pushed himself back to his feet, leaving her to eat, shower and dress.

  When she caught up with him he was out in the midday sunshine, rocking on two legs of a chair and studying a book of drawings by M. C. Escher. He was fascinated by the work of Escher, that master of mathematical mosaic, optical illusion and reflection. It was one of his favourite Sunday treats to listen to The Hollies or The Eagles while he gazed at the masterly work.

  'Lizards or geckos?' he asked, indicating a drawing where unlikely looking reptiles appeared to walk in and out of a mosaic. His hair blew over his forehead, and he pushed it back.

  She laid her hand upon the strength of his forearm. 'Adam I don't want you to think that I only want you for - '

  He covered her hand quickly with his, and squeezed it. 'Don't let's do this now.'

  'But I just want to - '

  'Please, don't!' He snatched his hand away and turned a page so roughly that it should have ripped from the book's spine.

  He'd never raised his voice to her like that before, and she recoiled. 'Why are you so angry with me?'

  His voice softened, but his gaze remained fixed upon his book. 'I'm angry at myself, not you, which is why it's not the time to talk. I shouldn't have let sex cloud the issue. I turned basic, and I wish I hadn't.'

  She waited for further illumination. 'Because...?'

  'Because it was amazing.'

  'Yes, it was. Absolutely amazing, and I don't regret it at all!' She was aware that she was using what her mother would call her 'difficult voice'.

  He turned to a page to where a single drop of water captured a world of reflections. 'Judith's satisfied with the way things turned out, so that's OK, then.'

  She'd never encountered him in this mood before, angry, rueful and troubled. Until now he'd seemed prepared to go at her pace, to wait for her while she traversed a road more rocky than his. Misery clouded her vision. She'd viewed their return to lovemaking as a breakthrough, but he was treating it like... like an awful error of judgement. 'That's not what I meant - '

  'How many times do I have to repeat myself, before you believe that I don't want to talk?'

  There was no point persisting while he was churning with anger. Better if she went to see Giorgio's parents and got that over with - she longed for the saga of the crucifix to be done - and then when she returned, hopefully he'd be his normal self. They could talk honestly without ghosts and missions hanging in the air between them. To discuss how she'd expected to feel at home again on the island, but couldn't. Stiffly, she rose. 'I have to go out for a while.'

  He turned a page slowly, to a house with an enormously bulbous balcony in its centre. 'Thought you might.'

  'I honestly don't think I'll be very long.'

  A silence drew out. As she turned away, he said, 'I'm going to see if I can change my flight. Leave a bit earlier.'

  She hesitated. 'I'm sorry you feel like that.' And then, when he didn't respond, 'Change both tickets, won't you? I'll go when you do.'

  Siesta was a good time to find the older generation at home, and the afternoon was hot by the time Judith climbed the hill of Tower Road to find the turn off for the house of Agnello and Maria Zammit. She was amazed at how the temperature was making her head throb, considering it was only just May. She was reacting like an English tourist, wiping sweat from her forehead with exaggerated care in case she increased the pulsing ache that was building there, making squinty eyes at the sun and cursing herself for not putting her sunglasses in her bag.

  The Zammit residence was in a tall and narrow street built of creamy limestone near the twin bell towers and cupola of the charming Stella Maris Parish Church, built so that sailors in the harbour could always have it within their sight. Although several houses in the street boasted traditional gallerija balconies painted dark green or plum red, it occurred to her that there was no comparison between these residences and Saviour's set on the St. Julian's side of Sliema. Agnello hadn't made the money that his little brother had. His house would fit into Saviour's four times.

  She sighed as she approached, remembering Maria Zammit's barely contained fury at their last meeting, and wondered, wryly, whether she ought to check that Stella Maris Church - the star of the sea - offered sanctuary to non-Catholics.

  The door was panelled, the highly polished brass knocker looked like the result of an intimate moment between a sea monster and a dolphin. Before she had a chance to change her mind, Judith seized it by its bulbous head and rapped sharply. And in a few moments she was face to face with Giorgio's mother.

  Maria looked first shocked, and then irritated. Her dark eyes narrowed into the lined skin around them, and she gave a little ladylike sniff of disapproval. Her dress bore a small, eye-aching geometric design, her hair was almost entirely silver now, and she wore small wire-framed glasses that matched it.

  For an instant, Judith felt like just giving the whole damned thing up, she was tired of being a target for antagonism. She could return to Richard's house and spend a day or two being a tourist with Adam before getting on the flaming plane for England, whenever he'd arranged. Why should she continue to knock on doors and force people to speak to her who patently didn't wish to? She could even, as Adam had suggested, have pushed the crucifix through the letterbox and turned away.

  But that was ridiculous! For goodness' sake, she was a perfectly respectable middle-aged woman, and not prepared to act as if she were ashamed of her existence. She pulled herself up to her full height - considerably more than Maria's - and lifted her chin. 'Good morning.'

  Maria Zammit's muttered, 'Good morning,' was no resounding welcome.

  It had been in Judith's mind to suggest that they take coffee and cake together in a café, like mature and civilised women with a matter to discuss. But, seeing Maria's face, she made a sudden decision to save her breath.

  Instead, she reached brusquely inside her pocket. 'I've brought you this.' The gold, getting duller by the day, hung between her fingers.

  Slowly, as if she couldn't quite believe it wouldn't be whisked away again, Maria Zammit reached out, and took the golden crucifix.

  Kissing the suffering Jesus, she crossed herself, closing her eyes on a moment of pain, as Judith had done so many times. The eyes reopened, and she frowned, looking baffled.

  Judith frowned back, shading her eyes against a dagger of sunlight slicing into the street. 'For a while I believed it was OK for me to keep it. But now I realise it belongs to you. Saviour told me what was in Giorgio's Will.' She turned to go.

  But then she swung back, ignoring the way her headache seemed to move separately, painfully, anger fuelling a sudden desire to make her point. 'I know that you blame me for his death. But I made your son's life happy for his final couple of years. Perhaps, in time, you'll come to think of that.'

  Slowly, Maria shook her head. 'You take him under the sea.'

  Letting her breath out on a long sigh, Judith hunched her shoulders in frustration. 'Not that day, I didn't!' And
then, more gently, 'I agree that if I'd been there, it wouldn't have happened. I believe that, as you obviously do. But I asked him...' Her voice caught in her throat as a sudden vision of Giorgio blazed across her mind, the angry frown lines digging grooves between his black brows as he'd shrugged off her pleas to postpone his dive. He'd been so irritated that she'd shut up. She cleared her throat. 'I asked him not to go without me. But he'd made up his mind. He made up his mind. But if you want to blame me, I understand that it might help to make me a focus for your grief.'

  She'd probably said too much, and said it too rapidly for Maria's instant comprehension. But what use was there in pounding over the same old ground again, anyway?

  Hitching her bag up on her shoulder, she thrust her hands into her jacket pockets, her fingertips finding the empty corner where the crucifix had lain in a tangle for the last days.

  She wasn't sure yet whether it was a loss or a relief.

  But, whichever, she'd drawn a line under the whole saga, and would, in time, feel better.

  As she swung away the ache in her head took on a life of its own, and the world suddenly shimmered and pooled around her.

  She halted, screwing up her eyes. The air was sparkling as if Tinkerbell had just flown around the edges of the buildings, making them glisten and warp.

  The sunshine on this fairy dust made her eyeballs ache unbearably, but she forced her feet to get going again, left-right, up the street, their echo launching lance-like pains above her eyes, across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. Her ears began to ache, making her uncomfortable with the chatter of children, car engines echoing as they passed in low gear, and the voices of three women calling to one another from their upstairs windows.

  Oh no. Migraine.

  She hadn't had one since her teens, but she hadn't forgotten how savagely they used to attack. Shading her eyes with her hand she felt the pavement turn to sponge beneath her feet. Her heart rose up into her throat.

  Putting out a hand to a wall to steady herself, she breathed in through her mouth, trying to quell the nausea as the world dipped alarmingly. Thankfully, she was unlikely to be humiliated by being sick in the street. If previous attacks were anything to go by she had a couple of hours of this misery before the sickness that would signify the end of the migraine swept over her. Sweat burst out all over her face, in the hollow of her throat and down her spine. She swallowed hard and breathed deeply.

  Engrossed in her own discomfort, she didn't notice that Maria had followed her until her voice came from behind. 'Hey!'

  Pain cannoned about Judith's skull as she half-turned.

  Maria was holding out the crucifix. To her. Agnello waited, a step behind his wife. He'd lost a lot of weight since Judith had seen him last. Probably grieving for his only son.

  Dumbfounded, she squinted at the glint of gold, then at Maria's expressionless face. 'What...?' She winced as the pain above her eyes grew boots and kicked at the top of her head.

  Impatiently, Maria shook the crucifix in Judith's direction.

  Slowly, Judith put out her hand. And Maria slithered it into her palm.

  'But...?' Bile pulsed in her throat in rhythm with the pounding in her head, and focussing through the fairy dust became harder. 'Are you giving it to me?'

  A tiny nod. Then a huge shrug, reminding Judith sharply of Giorgio. 'It was give to you.'

  She tried to think through a band tightening around her forehead. 'But should it have been?'

  Maria began to walk away. 'Perhaps yes. Perhaps no.' Agnello gave Judith a curious look, nodded, and followed Maria.

  Shaking, Judith managed to cross into the shade. But her pain increased until she felt as if massive talons gripped her entire head. Her vision danced and fizzed.

  She sank down against the base of the wall, legs like water, desperate to be still. Just to be out of the sun. To close her aching eyes. She prayed that the church bells wouldn't begin to peal.

  She was so taken up with her discomfort that she jerked as a hand grasped her shoulder. The movement made her feel as if her skull had broken into shards and rasped sickeningly against her brain.

  'You are ill?'

  She sliced her eyes open a slit to glimpse Maria Zammit wearing a tiny frown of concentration. The pattern of her dress made Judith feel as if she was spinning.

  'A little,' she said. 'Migraine, I think. I'll have to wait for it to go off a bit.' She let her eyes close again.

  Maria clicked her tongue and made a noise, 'Tsh, tsh. You don't stay here!'

  'I'll go soon. It'll pass. I just need...'

  With another click of her tongue, Maria turned away.

  Judith covered her eyes with her hands, craving darkness.

  And then there was a man beside her. Agnello. 'I put you in my car?'

  Judith swallowed convulsively at the thought of being shaken about on Malta's busy roads. 'Thank you, but I'm afraid of being sick.'

  'OK.' She felt a hand under her elbow. 'Come, you have a quiet room and lie down. Yes? We phone your friends.'

  She forced her eyes to open slightly as, one either side of her, they pulled her steadily to her feet. All she could think about was the blinding headache/seasickness/vertigo that was migraine, it was certainly no time for a prideful refusal. 'That would be... a relief. Thank you.'

  They helped her through the door and into a small room with a long sofa.

  She was pathetically grateful just to lie down and close her eyes as her unlikely white knights closed the thick russet curtains with stealthy movements, and fetched her a blessedly soft pillow for her poor head. She gave them Richard's home phone number, but they received no answer. Adam must have gone out. She elected not to phone Richard Morgan Estate, although Raymond and Lino would no doubt be there. She could live without their cousinly ministrations. She wanted Adam.

  As she couldn't get him, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to simple gratitude for the cool, dim room.

  Gently, gradually, she relaxed.

  Once she was motionless, the pain in her eyes, temples, cheekbones and the top of her head settled to a lancing throb, and the rolling nausea began to subsided.

  She dozed uneasily, torn between appreciation and anxiety. She'd found a haven but it had, until now, been hostile territory. Fervently, she wished she could click her fingers and find herself back in the bed she'd abandoned so late this morning. Preferably with Adam's comforting arms around her.

  The church bells began, sliding into her dreams as she dozed.

  The graceful Stella Maris Parish Church. Giorgio's funeral mass. Dark suits and dresses. Solemn faces, lines of grief, tears.

  And, back down the years, Johanna beautiful in a white lace dress, Giorgio handsome in a new suit, young and smiling and thinking they had a love to last. Proud, beaming family, Maria and Agnello, his sister, Josephine, Saviour and Cass. Nobody knowing that one day the implacable sea, the same that almost surrounded Sliema, would take him away.

  Her eyes flickered. A frightening image formed of the sea welling up onto shore after him... Her head banged with fresh pain as she moved unwisely on the pillow. No! The sea wasn't to blame it was the jet ski, roaring, racing into a diving zone. And Giorgio surfacing at the wrong instant...

  Giorgio hadn't taken every precaution possible. She swirled the idea around her mind, testing it for soundness. No one could argue with the fact that he'd committed the sin, for a diver, of not respecting the boundaries of his own limitations. Armed with his brand new open water certificate, really quite a basic qualification, he'd put himself in peril and flouted advice.

  Reckless, reckless!

  He'd risked a life that was good, a life containing her love. And paid the price. They all had.

  Because she'd known that she could probably have prevented the tragedy had she been there, she'd blamed herself, let others blame her, too. Attempted to shoulder a burden that had been impossibly unwieldy.

  According to Saviour, Giorgio had known about the lapsed insurance
policy. Perhaps fear at the consequences of his own mistake was what had made him reckless?

  If only you hadn't gone without me. Had waited until Sunday. The sea would still have been there, Giorgio. Her eyes popped open. He'd chosen to go without her. She closed her eyes again hastily as pain boomed behind them.

  This time without difficulty, she summoned Giorgio's image to her mind.

  And she smiled. Because the image of Giorgio was smiling, of course it would, he smiled often. The smile the image wore was the apologetic one he employed when his enthusiasms had overcome his common sense and everything had gone wrong. When he'd tried to speed up the cooking and burnt the meat. When he tried to force his way into traffic and pranged the car.

  When he refused to wait one day for an experienced diving buddy.

  When he forgot, in all likelihood, about listening for engines immediately prior to surfacing. Sighing, she frowned, trying not to move although she was growing cramped, anxious not to reawaken the blinding pain.

  Something felt strange.

  She was used to abrading her wounds and making certain that she could still feel the blame.

  Forgiving herself was a new sensation. A relief.

  Chapter Thirty

  It was an hour later when she awoke from restless, fitful dreams of headache, heartache and Giorgio.

  The tolling of the bells had ceased, and the house was filled with the aroma of frying onions. She could hear the murmur of voices, water running in a sink and the sawing of a bread knife.

  Experimentally, she opened her eyes. The glittering fairy dust had gone. She tried rolling her head on the pillow. Bearable. Cautiously, she pushed herself upright. Error!

  She launched to her feet and staggered out of the room, surprising Maria in the kitchen into dropping a wooden spatula. Mutely, Judith slapped a hand across her mouth, and Maria immediately grasped the urgent nature of the problem.