On a breathless night in Malta, light fragmented by bedroom shutters pries Maria’s eyes open. She leaves her empty bed. The church bells across the square toll five; just as they did fifty years ago, when the islanders prayed for oil, medicines, and food to reach Grand Harbour.
Maria slips a robe over her cotton nightdress and retrieves a hair tie from its pocket. She is worrying about the job interview she had last week. Maria gathers her dark curls into a loose bun on the top of her head and goes downstairs to the kitchen.
She rations coffee into the smaller pot and places it over a flame on the range. While she waits for water pressure to build, she counts the eggs in their wire helter-skelter. Maria wonders if May and Carl, still asleep in their beds upstairs, are old enough, at nine and eleven, to cope if she were to work longer hours.
The dark, oily liquid gurgles and splutters as it's forced upwards to pool in the pot and fills the kitchen with its familiar aroma.
Maria takes her coffee to the terrace and looks across Mosta to the arid countryside and villages that radiate from the harbour. Sat amongst her orange-scented pelargoniums, she imagines her husband, Anthony, asleep in his bunk somewhere at sea. She sips her bitter brew and listens to the squeaking washing line wheels of women hoping to dry their washing before the Festa fireworks rain down later.
Carl appears next to her, looking as if he’s grown in the night, and says his usual replacement for Good Morning, ‘I’m hungry.’
In the kitchen, May, with her halo of sun-bleached curls framing her face, sleepily sets the table for breakfast. Carl plonks himself on the sofa to watch television.
Maria starts making their breakfast. May watches her sauté minced onion and then finely slice a courgette, reserving the two tomatoes for tea. The courgette sizzles when it hits the pan. Maria sprinkles them with sea salt flakes to draw out the moisture and prevent them from burning. She taps the spoon on the edge of the pan, freeing the translucent slivers that cling to it, then places it on a deep blue spoon rest. While Maria whisks the eggs with a pinch of thyme, May pushes the courgettes around with the spoon. Maria pours the frothy eggs into the pan. May scrambles them carefully and turns off the heat, then taps the spoon like her mother on the edge of the pan. Maria divides the eggs between two plates and puts them on the table for her children.
Sitting at the table with a second cup of coffee, Maria says to her children, ‘Don’t forget you’re with Nonna while I go to the office in Valletta this morning. I’ll be back for lunch.’
‘Okay, okay. We know. Are you going to speak to Papa?’ Carl asks, polishing his plate with a crust of yesterday’s hobz.
‘I am going to try. If his ship makes it to Cadiz today, he’ll call.’
‘When will he be back?’ May asks.
‘In four or five days,’ Maria replies.
‘What’s for lunch?’ Carl asks.
‘Madonna! You’ve only just finished your breakfast! I’ll pick something up. May, eat. We need to get moving.’
As they set off for her mother’s in Sliema, the bells of Santa Marija strike seven.
In her faded housecoat, Doris opens the front door, where she has lived since her wedding day. Determined to have room to host all five of her sons and their families for their infrequent visits back to the island, she refuses to move to somewhere smaller.
Beginning with Carl, Doris’s lips assess each of their temperatures with a kiss. Her caliper fingers test for sufficient flesh as she embraces them. Doris holds their faces between her hands and scans their eyes. The children go through to the kitchen and find a second breakfast waiting. As Doris shuffles behind them in her house shoes, she calls, ‘Wash your hands! And remember, you must give thanks to God before you eat!’
‘Thank you, Ma, but I fed them. I’ll just file the shipping orders and try to speak to Anthony. Do you need me to get you anything while I’m out?’ Maria asks.
‘No, no, I’m fine. Children need to eat. They’re growing. You’re too thin, Maria. No wonder you haven’t had any more children,’ she says, pinching her thumb and pointer finger together in the air. ‘Leave your car here and take the ferry. They’ve closed more roads for the Festa this year. It's bigger with all these tourists from the UE.’
‘Ma, it’s the EU. And I’m fine. Please, for your sake, make sure Carl runs around, or he’ll drive you up the wall.’
‘I’ll take them to Mass at ten. He can run there and back. What about you? When will you go to Mass?’
‘Ma. I’d better go, or I’ll be late getting back. Carl, May, I’m off! Be good for Nonna!’ she says and shuts the front door quickly behind her.
Outside, the windows and shutters of flat-fronted houses are open wide before the midday sun forces them closed. Maria follows the worn cobbled streets that slope towards the harbour and turns left at the church where she was baptised.
The first time she sat in the coffin-like confessional, Maria peered curiously through the door’s star-shaped cutouts, searching for clues. The priest reminded her of a bull she’d seen kept in a small shed to strengthen its amorous resolve. She was sure that if the bull turned, the shed would explode, firing splinters into her and the docile heifers grazing in the fields around her.
Maria waited on the hard wooden bench, staring at the hollow stars, unsure what to say.
‘Hello?’ she tried, twisting one of the tight plaits that pulled on her scalp.
‘Well, my child, go on. Confess your sins,’ said the priest, strumming his fingers impatiently on his seat.
‘Sins? I don’t have any,’ she said.
He snorted, ‘No one but God is perfect. Reflect my child. I can’t forgive you if you don’t confess.’
She ran through the Ten Commandments in her mind but couldn’t think of any she’d broken.
‘I’m only eight, Father,’ she said, wishing she could see his face to find the answer that would free her from the stifling box.
‘Well, my child, on your head be it. But remember to be obedient. God sees all.’
Maria crossed herself and was replaced by the next child.
The following day, Maria refused to go to Mass, so Doris used the spoon she regularly administered to her sons. Maria spent the rest of the week perched on the edge of her seat to avoid the bruised flesh.
Dressed as a child bride for her First Communion, Maria stood before the same priest and reached her tiny hands towards him for her first holy wafer. Mechanically, she placed it in her mouth, bowed her head and crossed herself.
The tasteless disc caught in her throat as Maria returned to her pew. Sat amongst the other girls, she tipped her head forward. Pretending to sneeze, she spat the disc into her handkerchief and tossed the wadge under the pew in front of her.
Now on the promenade at the end of Tower Road, Maria boards the empty ferry. Its red and white bunting flutters in the breeze. A woman swats four children onto a bench opposite Maria before claiming her spot in the middle.
The gold medallion of the Virgin Mary dangling from her neck reflects the sun onto Maria’s face as she scavenges in her handbag. The woman produces two crinkly packets and gives one to each of the two eldest children, then continues to root around in her bag. She gives another packet to the younger two and tells them, ‘Share and be grateful!’ Unlike the old ferries Maria used to take, this one quietly glides away from the dock without leaving smoking engine oil in its wake.
Docked on the other side, Maria steps off and struggles to regain her land legs. She climbs the steep path towards Great Siege Road, passing rows of terraced houses with thickly painted doors in bold reds, blues and yellows.
In the office sheltered from the sun by neighbouring buildings, she’s relieved to be alone. Maria dusts the empty desks while she waits nervously for her antiquated computer to come to life. She waters the Peace Lilies dotted around to purify the air and follows crispy leaves to their bases to pinch them off. Resurrected, the computer clangs to alert her to an email.
She crosses herself and opens it, unsure which reply she wants more.
Dear Mrs Ellul,
We are delighted to offer you the promotion to Dock Operations Coordinator. We will be in touch shortly to discuss the details and your transition.
Maria crosses herself again. She will reply tomorrow. Today, she will work on the shipping orders and duplicate copies required with the island's new membership in the EU.
Finished, Maria locks the office and returns to the harbour. The bells of St Paul’s mark twelve.
What would her mother say if she began to work full-time? As far as Doris knew, Maria was a part-time secretary. She’d never felt able to share the progression she’d made at the company with her mother. Mothers and wives were to work out of necessity. What would she think of Maria running the docks?
She walks along the streets filled with foreigners and notices the shrapnel scars on nearly every building she passes. The fingerprints of bombs gifted during the two-year siege are darker and deeper in the midday sun.
At the dock, mobs of English, German and French tourists sing and drink beers while they filter onto the ferry. One of the last to arrive, Maria is left on the dock with a handful of other locals unused to queueing for their regular boat.
A man next to her, about the age her father would have been, shouts, ‘What about us?’
One of the boatmen shrugs and says, ‘There will be other boats.’
Maria exchanges a resigned look with the others who sit down to wait on the harbour wall. They listen to the receding foreign voices. She remembers her company’s skiff moored on one of the floating docks nearby and checks her keyring.
Further along the seawall, she finds the brightly coloured boat rocking against its neighbours. She unwinds the painter from the cleat hitch that holds her to the dock and coils the stiff rope into the bottom of the boat. She looks at the engine apprehensively. Her eyes closed, Maria breathes in the salty air while the sea rolls cyclically beneath her. She opens her eyes, inserts the key into the ignition, and tilts the engine into the water. She squeezes the priming bulb, puts the throttle into neutral, and cranks the choke. The engine grumbles and splutters to life. Maria sits down, turns the throttle, and reverses away from the dock with a mellow rumble. Sea spray and relief wash over her as she turns the boat around. Changing gears, she points the bow across the channel to cut across the harbour at its narrowest point.
She keeps close to shore knowing the wake of the larger boats is as dangerous as the naval mines which once filled the harbour.
Near the dock, she drops into neutral and glides to the seawall. She retrieves the damp, now pliable painter and winds it into a figure eight around the metal cleat, pulls it tight and kills the engine.
On the corner of Triq Tal-Katidral and Tower Road, Maria stops beneath a green and gold sign, Grech Bakery. Inside, the shelves usually brimming with loaves, pastries and cakes, have been stripped bare for celebratory feasts.
‘Bongu, Lidia, may I please have pastizzi? 6 of the cheese and 3 of the beef? And a hobz too? Save me cooking tonight. Grazzi.’
‘Ta Maria. How are you? You look tired.’
‘Thank you. Yes, you know what it’s like. Working, children, parents.’
‘Here you go. Don’t I just! What a relief I could only have one baby! I could tell my mother it was “God’s will” for a change. Look after yourself, Maria.’
‘Grazzi Lidia, you too!’ replies Maria and leaves the bakery with the loaf of bread and box of flaky pastries shaped like the skiffs bobbing around the island. It never occurred to her that God’s will could work to her advantage.
On her mother’s street, Carl is playing football with some of the neighbourhood children. Progressing the ball towards the goal, he doesn’t see her wave at him.
The brass dolphin door knocker blurred by Doris’s faithful polishing raps softly when Maria shuts the door behind her. She tucks her bags under the hall table with the figure of Saint Anthony and his bald head, shiny from nervous fingers.
Maria kisses her fingers and places them on the black-and-white photograph of a fourteen-year-old girl that hangs above him.
‘Hello, Auntie May’, she says quietly.
Maria never met her mother’s sister, but grew up with the story of May and her cough that filled the cellar while they hid from the bombs every night. The cough that stopped, not because Saint Anthony answered their prayers. Or because May finally took notice of her mother’s spoon. But, because the night before the convoy limped in and covered the harbour with a slick of flammable oil, May could no longer draw breath with which to cough.
In the kitchen, Doris and her granddaughter are surrounded by rows of spoons balanced on tin cans. They are singing Doris’s favourite songs. All from the war. Strands of angel hair hang from the spoon handles to dry.
She’ll need to tell Doris if she takes the job. She’ll need her help with the children.
‘Like this, Nonna?’ May asks, lowering the delicate pasta onto a spoon.
‘Iva, well done,’ says Doris and kisses her forehead.
‘Ma, you didn’t need to make pasta,’ Maria says.
‘The children like it, and it’s good for them.’
‘You’ll get too tired. And you’re not even supposed to eat it!’
Doris glances upwards and crosses herself, then says, ‘Le! I’ve lasted this long. We didn’t let the Germans tell us how to live. I won’t let a doctor start now. Don’t forget your father’s roses,’ she says, and shoos Maria with a floury hand towards the garden.
As a new bride, Doris sporadically watered her husband’s garden in deluges when he was away for work, nearly killing the plants by feast or famine. The job fell to Maria when he became ill, despite the baby on her hip and another on the way. Thankfully, he’d taught her to be consistent and measured on the allotment that had supplemented the family diet, and she appreciated the excuse to be alone outside.
Finished blooming for the year, the roses still need lots of water to sustain them in the dry heat. Done watering, Maria half-heartedly removes the weeds springing up in the cracked earth, then she goes back inside.
‘You’re tired, Ma. We’ll get out of your way. Thank you for looking after the children for me.’
Doris tuts, ‘What else am I here for?’
‘Carl, May, time to go. Thank Nonna and give her a kiss.’
Doris hands Maria a bundle of fresh pasta and a container of sharp, tangy caponata.
‘Eat,’ Doris tells her.
‘Thank you, Ma. Rest.’
The love coded in their instructions to one another flows over their heads and down their backs.
At home, Maria puts a few spoonfuls of sugar in the middle of a plate and puts the cheese pastizzi around the edges. She sits with the children, and they dip the pastizzi into the sugar before crunching in. Maria trades the overbearing heat for cool darkness and closes the shutters.
‘Shall we take a nap on my bed so we’re ready for tonight?’ she asks her children.
May and Carl resist half-heartedly. They each claim one of her arms to curl up in and wriggle to stillness.
Where would all those other children fit?
Ring, ring, ring.
‘Hello?’ Maria says into the phone cautiously.
‘Hello, my love, sorry I couldn’t ring earlier. We had to fix one of the bilge pumps. How are you?’ Anthony asks.
‘Oh. I’m fine. You?’
‘I’m all right. And the children?’
‘They are napping for tonight. I’ve got some news.’
‘Tonight? What news?’
‘Yes, it’s the Festa of Santa Marija.’
‘Ah, of course. And your news?’
‘Is that Papa?’ interrupts a groggy Carl.
Maria hands Carl the phone and opens the shutters to the night. The pulsing sounds on the street below wake May up.
Maria goes to the cellar to get a bottle of wine. The steady marching and drumming vibrate down from the street as the processions begin and send shivers up her legs. She takes a long drink of red wine and listens to Carl upstairs excitedly planning a journey around the island with his father.
The wine catches in her tight throat and sets off a coughing jag that echoes back at her.
‘Carl, can I speak to Papa?’ asks May.
‘What have you got to tell him?’ Carl replies.
May begins to wail.
Maria climbs the steps quickly.
In the kitchen, Carl has a fistful of May’s hair in one hand, and the phone in the other. May is digging her fingernails into Carl’s arm.
Maria takes a spoon from the jug beside the range and raps it on the marble worktop.
‘Stop that!’ she says, moving towards them with the spoon raised above her head.
Like an electric arc, Carl and May step away from one another in a flash.
The sound of the people gathered for the Festa replaces their shouting.
Anthony’s distant voice says, ‘I’ll leave you to it. Goodbye,’ and a disengaged tone replaces him.
A wave of landsickness ripples through Maria. She closes her eyes. She can feel the sea rolling beneath her again. She looks at May’s face. It is still braced for whatever will come next. Maria puts the spoon down on the counter.
‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ May says, a tear rolling down her cheek.
‘Me too, Ma,’ says Carl.
‘Oh anglu. You don’t need to be sorry. I’m sorry,’ replies Maria, kissing their foreheads.
‘Ma, can we still go to the Festa?’ Carl asks cautiously.
‘Yes, of course,’ she replies.
‘Good. But Ma…I’m hungry,’ Carl says.
‘I’ll get it,’ says May.
‘Iva, no. I’ll do it. Hobz Biz-Zjet?’
‘Yes, please,’ they reply.
Carl goes onto the terrace to watch the Festa.
May lingers in the kitchen.
‘May, you don’t need to help me. Go watch the Festa. Thank you, though,’ Maria tells her.
Maria pours a generous slug of olive oil and slurp of dark balsamic vinegar onto a lipped plate, then adds generous pinches of salt and pepper. She cuts the two tomatoes horizontally and dips the cut sides into the mixture. Pressing down gently, their red juice releases and swirls into the oil and vinegar. She rubs the impregnated tomato halves back and forth on the bread she has split open, staining it pink. After repeating the process with the remaining bread and tomato, she squashes the tomatoes to a pulp on the oily plate and spreads it on the bread. Then she cuts the loaf into unequal thirds and places the largest on her own plate.
‘Carl, can you bring me some mint, please?’ Maria asks.
Maria can hear him whispering to May and says, ‘Not May. You please, Carl.’
Carl stomps into the kitchen with a fistful of stems, some with roots dangling from the ends.
‘Thank you. Shall we go on the roof?’ she asks, chopping a few leaves of mint finely to sprinkle onto the bread.
‘Why the roof?’ Carl asks.
‘I thought we could watch the fireworks up there.’
‘Oh. Sure!’
Maria empties the crock of wooden spoons and ties them into a tea towel, then slips a box of matches into her pocket, and grabs the newspaper from the coffee table.
‘Come on then. Afterwards, we can go down for ice cream. Carl, can you bring the food for me? May, can you bring some napkins?’
On the roof terrace, the Mosta Rotunda is shrouded in festival lights in front of them. A halo of fireworks sparkles around the building familiar with explosions. Below them, the locals and tourists mingle together on the streets.
Maria removes the barbeque lid and lifts out the grate. She places crumpled pages of news and politics on top of the leftover charcoal briquettes in the bowl. She holds a struck match to them and unties the tea towel. Picking up one of the spoons, she breaks it in two on her knee. She holds one end over the flame until it glows, then adds it to the fire.
Maria hands May a spoon and tells her, ‘Go on, break them.’
May struggles with the dense wood.
‘Here, I’ll help you,’ Carl tells her.
He puts his foot on the spoon's bowl and tells May to pull the handle upwards until it snaps.
May stands on the next spoon herself and persists until it breaks.
‘I did it!’ May says.
‘Well done, May!’ Carl tells her.
The church bells mark the final flourish of fireworks as they finish breaking the last of the spoons.
Maria explains, ‘You mustn’t smother the fire, it needs oxygen to grow,’ and shows her children how to add the bits of wood one at a time.
The fire builds quickly.
Together, they watch the broken implements glow red hot and then, as the energy transforms into heat, bright white.
With the celebration over, the streets return to their usual quiet.
Maria steps back and watches her children turning the spoons to ash.
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