The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi Read Free Book Online

small fat figure barred his way and spoke to him. In the rattle of his words, Frankie recognized the tell-tale rhythm of Sicilian-Maltese, and the signs he
couldn’t hear but simply knew: that emphatic jerking of the head, and the hand gestures – first two kissing beaks, now cupped together in a fleshy round. Carlo Cross, the fat man, had a
room for him if he wanted. Frankie wanted.
    ~
    And Carlo brought him here, gave him a chit to sign – another frantic X – for the purchase of the furniture and the rental of the room. He threw Frankie a long iron
key for the back door, and told him, in English-Maltese, the rules:
    No women in here, capisce, my friend? Leh tifla! Issamma – listen. You know English? No women. Cash only to me. Capisce?
    with those hands doing the bird and nest, then moving fast when Frankie handed over the roll of strange notes. Carlo peeled some off, returned the rest, and left Frankie to
himself.
    It wasn’t what he expected. He had imagined a boarding-house full of other seamen, nights of drinking and smoking and playing cards. In the morning (in the sunshine that seemed to exist
only in Frankie’s head), he would walk out with his new friends – his habib – and find the bars he’s heard of, take coffee, eat cake. He hasn’t chosen Cardiff
by accident: he’s heard there’s a great clan of Maltese here, with more arriving every day. There is money to be made at sea, he’s been told, and this is the place to spend
it.
    Tiger Bay – the Valletta of Britain! his crew-mate had laughingly told him as the ship dropped anchor. And it was supposed to be a warm port.
    ~
    The memory makes Frankie jolt. The coldest winter, ever. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Ilya grins suddenly, amused by the sight of my father’s
discomfort. They both know that Joe Medora could make him stand there all day. It is a battle which Frankie can’t win; he must stay calm. He sets his eyes on the past.
    ~
    Frankie sat beneath the window, dabbed at his nose with his handkerchief, studied his new home. The ceiling sloped down steeply in one corner, with a bed wedged in the gap
below. The first night, he couldn’t sleep for the traipse of feet on the stairs above his head, so close to his ear they seemed to be stumbling over his face.
    There is another bunk he could use, shoved against the wall in the narrow space between the front door and the back. But the front door has a gaping mouth for a letterbox, and Frankie shudders
at the way the through-draught frets the edges of the pillow: he would rather lie down in the corner with the noise. And in time, he will learn to ignore the din of men who call so late on the
women in the flat above. He will learn to slide sideways from his bed in the mornings, and not bang his head.
    Frankie doesn’t ponder the fact of the beds, he assumes that one of them is intended as a makeshift couch. He has put his cardboard suitcase on it, has hung his clothes in the tilting
wardrobe, and placed his shoes, newly polished, under his bed. He thinks he is the only tenant here.
    Yesterday, shuddering with cold, he walked out and found a corner shop, pointed at a sack of coal and coasted it back, gliding and skidding, to his door. He carried the coal in handfuls through
the scullery and piled them up in the grate, put newspaper on top, added some broken bits of a crate he’d found in the yard, then lit a blaze and watched it die. He started again from
scratch, properly, and after an hour Frankie sat in the warmth, loving it: holding his hands out and letting the heat shine through them, toasting his left side, then his right. The room shrank to
a bag of fog. Steam breathed off the walls; the ice on the inside of the window melted to a long pool on the sill, then poured suddenly onto the floor. Frankie gave up and opened the window a crack
to let in some air. Now it won’t shut tight again.
    This morning someone banged on the front door. Frankie didn’t have