Up For Grabs

by Max Hennessy

He fished. ‘Which would you prefer?’

  Her shoulders lifted. ‘I worked in England once. I speak good English. Listen: “Pass down the bus, please. No standing on the platform.” How about that? And “What is your choose?” when you ask someone to have a drink. And when one has had a triumph, “Bob’s your ankle.” Who is this Bob, I wonder.’

  ‘Nobody in particular,’ Caccia said. ‘It’s just a phrase. “Bob’s your uncle.”’

  ‘Ah! I visited many places in London. Waterloo Square and Trafalgar Station. Named for battles when the English beat Napoleon.’

  ‘You mean Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Station. Trafalgar Square’s got a big column in it with a statue of Admiral Nelson on top.’

  ‘Sì. A proud nation, the English. I’ve also seen the Arco di Marma. The Arch of Marble.’

  ‘The English call it the Marble Arch.’

  ‘Such wealth!’ She turned the words over on her tongue. ‘Is it really of marble? I wish I’d stayed in England. They’d probably have put me in prison when Italy came into the war but I think I’d rather be in prison in England than free in Italy. There isn’t much difference. Except that they get fed in England. Meat several times a week, they say. Even with a war on. And they don’t have that loud-mouthed stallion Mussolini shouting at them.’ She sighed. ‘It was better here when the English soldiers were here. They don’t pinch your bottom like the Italians. It’s always better when there are soldiers here. Most of the civilians are gone.’

  ‘No other Italian girls?’

  ‘One or two. I have a friend, Teresa Gelucci. But most of them work in the officers’ hotels. Some of them have even become officers’ groundsheets. I wouldn’t work for them.’

  ‘The Italians are their allies.’

  She sniffed. ‘I am not truly Italian. I’m a cosmopolitan. I’ve been to London. I stopped a day in Paris on the way home, and I have worked in German Switzerland.’ She paused for a moment and sighed; in the sigh was all her longing for the romance of big cities.

  ‘It’s dead here,’ she went on. ‘I think they take the sidewalks in after dark. No clothes – where would you buy clothes in Zuq? No lipstick, no face-powder. No perfume nearer than Derna. The ships carry only shells and guns.’

  Caccia remembered what Clutterbuck had seen. ‘I can get you lipstick,’ he offered. ‘I can get you perfume.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ She looked sad. ‘I wish my mamma hadn’t died. I’d still have been in England. I might have married an Englishman like my cousin, Cecilia Neri. She thought they’d put her in prison but she had a couple of children and they couldn’t put the wife of a soldier and the mother of his kids in prison. They’re not like Hitler over there, you know. She’s all right, too, because there are plenty of other Italians round her. Well’ – she gestured – ‘not Italian Italians. English Italians. They look after her. It used to be easy for Italians to go to England. They set up in London. Soho. That’s where this cousin of mine lives. Her husband has a big house with lawns and gardens. In Dean Street.’

  ‘There aren’t any big houses with lawns and gardens in Dean Street,’ Caccia said. ‘It’s all shops and offices and restaurants.’

  ‘You know London?’

  Caccia did a little quick thinking. ‘Worked there before the war. A month or two. In a restaurant.’

  ‘Harrods?’

  ‘Harrods isn’t a restaurant. It’s a big store.’

  She sighed again. ‘My cousin Cecilia was lucky. She was going to pay a visit to her family in Rome but she found she was having another baby and couldn’t go. She was lucky. The war started and she’d have had to stay. Her husband’s family have a food store called the Continental Market. Angelo Donatello her father-in-law’s called. Her husband’s called—’

  ‘Max.’

  Her eyebrows shot up. ‘You know him?’

  Caccia had spoken without thinking and he hurriedly backed down. ‘No, no.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve been to Soho? You know the Donatellos?’

  ‘No, no.’ Caccia’s automatic response to a familiar name was getting him into trouble. The unbelievable coincidence that this girl was a cousin of the wife of a man he’d known all his life, who’d attended the same school, chased the same girls, gone to the same dances, seemed impossible.

  But he’d been to Max Donatello’s wedding and kissed the bride because Max Donatello was the son of a grocer like Caccia himself, working in and living above a shop redolent with Italian scents and hung with sausages and peppers and Italian vegetables. He’d even been called up with Caccia but, because his interests had always been with filling his stomach, he had managed to get into the Catering Corps and was now a sergeant chef in an officers’ mess in England, able to get home at regular intervals to his wife, the Italian girl who was cousin, by God, to this girl who was leaning on the counter of her uncle’s bar, staring at him with large, dark, suspicious eyes.

  He was still considering how to convince her when he heard the car outside. He was glad to bolt.

  ‘Ciao,’ he said. ‘See you again!’

  She didn’t answer and as he appeared outside the door Clutterbuck stuck his head from the car. He was still wearing his galabiyah and make-up but like the others was smoking a British Players.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Look slippy!’

  Caccia glanced at the girl, who was staring at him with hostile eyes as he scrambled aboard. But as Morton revved the engine her expression changed and she started to wave.

  ‘Eh, soldato!’ she screamed. ‘Ritornate! Ritornatevi! Come again!’

  Chapter 9

  That night the RAF came. It was fairly well understood at the other side of the lines that the Italians were up to something, and with Zuq among the entry ports for their army’s supplies it was inevitable that the RAF should turn their attention to it.

  As the bombs whistled down round the harbour, the fire brigade turned out as usual and, despite their frightened eyes and wild cries of alarm, they did sterling work. They had no sooner put out a fire near the harbour, however, than the fort was hit. A wall collapsed but, apart from two lorries which went up in flames, little other damage was done. Even as the fire brigade headed towards it, though, they were caught up by a dispatch rider with the information that a corner of the hospital had also been hit.

  Scarlatti, the town major, had called out the troops and the place was surrounded by soldiers in trucks and cars, and a whole string of them started carrying out patients and equipment and laying them on the lawns. To aid the ancient fire appliances, the usual bucket chain was started from one of the ponds supplying water to the fountain but it was never sufficient and, as they struggled to douse the flames, other soldiers were putting up marquees to house the rescued patients.

  While all this was going on, a stray salvo of bombs from one of the last aeroplanes over the town hit Scarlatti’s dump. The first bomb brought down the gatehouse and part of the fence. A second fell inside, bringing down a corner of the food store, another demolished part of the heavy tool store, and the last two removed the fence at the far side. Immediately, as the news shot around the town, every Arab and Italian who wasn’t afraid to be out in the bombing descended on the place to grab what he could.

  * * *

  Clegg, who had taken to sleeping under one of the lorries for safety, lifted his head sharply at the sound of a vehicle roaring into camp and hit it sharply enough against the axle to bring tears to his eyes. Crawling out dizzily, he saw it was Clutterbuck who had been in the town searching for beer. He had just arrived back and was yelling blue murder.

  ‘The whole bloody place’s wide open and up for grabs!’ he was screaming. ‘Scarlatti’s doing his nut, yellin’ for ’elp, and they’ve turned out all ’is staff and labourers and ’alf the Italian police to get the stuff away before it’s either burned or pinched! But you can’t tell who’s rescuin’ it and who’s pinchin’ it and, in any case, as soon as they dump it outside, it gets pinched again! If we get in
quick we can get everything we need to set us up!’

  The whole area was chaos. Two palm trees, caught by the blast and uprooted to cant at an angle of forty-five degrees, had brought down telephone wires which hung in loops over the road to cut communications with anywhere outside the town. There seemed to be hundreds of soldiers and night-shirted Arabs about and they all seemed to have their arms full. The military police kept stopping them but the Italians said they were rescuing the stuff and all the Arabs apparently had passes to indicate they were on the staff of the dump.

  ‘Half of ’em false,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘Never mind usin’ your ’ands. Just drive the lorry in.’

  They were stopped at the gap in the fence where the gate had been by a frightened young soldier with his rifle at the ready.

  ‘Get out of the way, man,’ Morton shouted at him. ‘This whole business is ridiculous! People are carrying things out one at a time. We should be saving it in lorryloads, not handfuls.’

  The soldier seemed to agree that it was a good idea and waved them through.

  ‘The heavy tools, Clutterbuck,’ Rafferty demanded immediately. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Over ’ere,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘They got acetylene burners an’ the lot.’

  The end of the heavy tool store was lying in a pile of splintered planks and, because most people were after the food and the lighter articles which could easily be carried away, the immediate area was deserted both by looters and guards. A generator went into the back of the lorry first, followed by a block and tackle, acetylene burners and gas cylinders. Then Clutterbuck spotted a heavy-duty drill.

  ‘We could do with one ’o them,’ he said. ‘’Ang on. I’ll get another lorry.’

  As the rest of them grabbed tools, tyres and spare parts, he disappeared into the flame-lit darkness to return five minutes later with a Lancia truck.

  Directed by Rafferty, who knew exactly what they required, they began to fill the second truck. One eye on the future, Clegg had found a crate of beer. Food, clothing, camp equipment followed. By this time they had been joined by other Italian soldiers and a few Arabs. Most of them were helping themselves, on the principle that if it were going to be destroyed why not enjoy it?

  Morton spotted Scarlatti in the distance, standing in the back of his car screaming orders at a group of soldiers, and Faiani, on foot, limping painfully about, flourishing a fistful of papers as he marshalled Arab labourers into carrying things to safety outside the main gate. As soon as he’d disappeared, Morton stepped from the shadows and ordered the Arabs to stuff what they’d rescued into the lorry Clutterbuck had appropriated. Then, as he found the liquor store and was just helping himself to a case of Italian brandy, he became aware of another man in the shadows. His heart thumped, but, as the spill from a searchlight fell on the other figure, he saw it was Sergeant Schwartzheiss, staggering under a case marked JOHN WALKER AND CO., SCOTCH WHISKY.

  For a second they stopped dead, facing each other, the light playing on their faces. Schwartzheiss grinned.

  ‘Guten Abend, tenente,’ he said, his teeth gleaming in the glow of the flames.

  ‘Buona sera, sergente,’ Morton replied.

  ‘On business, tenente?’

  ‘You, too, I see.’

  Schwartzheiss nodded at the case Morton was carrying. ‘Two of mine for two of yours,’ he said.

  They switched bottles quickly and Schwartzheiss’s teeth gleamed.

  ‘Gute Nacht, tenente.’

  ‘Buona notte, sergente. E buona fortuna.’

  ‘Das Glück. Good luck to you, too, tenente. Funny how you can get involved in this sort of thing and see so many people without recognizing a soul.’

  Morton laughed. ‘Not a soul, sergeant. Not a soul.’

  As Morton returned to the lorry, people were tossing blankets, bedding, tents, flags, anything they could get hold of into it from any salvaged pile that was handy. Coats, shirts, shorts, military plus-fours, socks, jerseys, scarves, caps, overcoats, boots – most of them originally British and, like the whisky, the beer and the cigarettes, the spoils of the disaster at Mechili. Belts, packs, ammunition pouches, bayonet scabbards, rifles laid down by their owners to make the fetching and carrying easier. Tins of food. Bottles of wine. Looted British rum.

  The first lorryload had already disappeared, driven off by Caccia, when the panic began to subside. As some sort of order began to be brought into the affair, Rafferty decided to leave while it was safe. A squad of military police brought up by Bianchi’s successor were starting to search the Arabs but, with Morton standing on the running board shouting, ‘Aprire la strada! Make way, make way,’ nobody stopped them and they arrived back at their camp undetected and elated by their success.

  Twisted by his lumbago, Dampier could only grind his teeth with frustration that he hadn’t had the pleasure of being there too, and tried to console himself with the thought that at least it had been his command which had done the work. When he saw what they’d acquired, however, he was aghast, thinking of investigations, enquiries, even courts martial – all conducted in Italian.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘We’re beginning to look like a heavy duty unit!’

  Aware that, after British army parsimony, even he had been overcome by the excitement and the joy of robbing the enemy, Rafferty managed to look sheepish. ‘It was there,’ he explained.

  ‘So we had to steal it!’ Dampier was shocked. ‘Because it was up for grabs.’

  ‘You couldn’t just leave it,’ Morton said.

  ‘And we can’t give it back,’ Clegg pointed out. ‘We could mebbe bury some of it—’

  ‘Or flog it in Derna,’ Caccia suggested.

  ‘Or even,’ Rafferty suggested, ‘make it official. Properly issued, accounted and signed for.’

  ‘Italian army forms D3801 and C2947!’ Morton grinned.

  Despite Dampier’s alarm, there was no point in not putting what they’d acquired to good use, so they started work at once. Working all night, they changed the signs and the paintwork on the lorry they’d acquired, filed off the engine number and stamped on a new one, unloaded tents, bedding, clothing, the generator and the oxyacetylene welding apparatus, and filled in – from Rafferty’s experience of stores and Morton’s knowledge of Italian procedure – the blank inventory forms they’d picked up from the bombed convoy the first night in Zuq. To complete the picture, all that was necessary was for Clutterbuck to add his version of Brigadier Olivaro’s signature, which, until they felt safe to move east, would make them officially part of the Italian North African army.

  It was a satisfying feeling as they breakfasted off looted and re-looted British bacon, sausages and tea. As he pushed away his dixie, Clinch held out a packet of cigarettes to Jones the Song.

  ‘After all,’ he said, ‘what is loot? Anything that’s left lying around. Have a smoke. These are better than them bird shit and camel dung Indian Vs they issue us with. We got enough tents now to start a circus. Old Clutterbuck knew what he was doing.’ He stopped abruptly and sat up slowly. ‘Incidentally,’ he said slowly, ‘where is Clutterbuck?’

  * * *

  In the excitement nobody had noticed Clutterbuck was missing and, as the news flew round the camp, they stared at each other, edgy and concerned again.

  ‘He doesn’t speak much Italian,’ Morton pointed out. ‘Suppose they’ve arrested him.’

  ‘More likely hanged him,’ Dampier growled.

  All the same, when Clutterbuck hadn’t turned up by lunchtime they began to grow nervous. But nobody else turned up either – neither the Italian service carabinieri nor the German feldpolizei – so that, while they made preparations for a quick departure just in case, they decided to risk it and wait a little longer.

  During the afternoon, Clegg, boiling his spare socks in a dixie as he sat on a hump of sand on lookout, became aware of a truck heading towards him. It was an Italian Lancia and he recognized the driver at once.

  ‘It’s old Buttercluck,
’ he grinned. ‘He made it after all.’

  As Clutterbuck jumped down, he looked indignant. ‘Got copped,’ he explained. ‘Got arrested, din’t I? That bloody Sub-lieutenant Fanny. Caught me with a bottle in me fist.’

  ‘Did he ask who you were?’

  ‘Asked all sorts of things. I just acted daft.’

  ‘Did he recognize you?’

  ‘Naw, it was dark. But he got a couple of Libyan conscripts to guard me. Shoved me in a shed, the bastards did, and locked the door. Thought I’d had it. Only they forgot about the window. It opened from inside, and I nipped out at the back. I expect they’re still guardin’ the door.’ Clutterbuck’s grin reappeared. ‘’Alf the bloody dump’s disappeared.’

  ‘Old Scarlatti’ll cop it in the neck.’

  ‘Not ’im.’ Clutterbuck was full of contempt for Clegg’s naivety. ‘’E was at it as ’ard as the rest, shiftin’ what ’e could for ’is private use every time that Fanny feller turned his back. It’ll all be locked up now and he’ll probably even ’ave a sergeant o’ police ’e can trust to guard it. ’E’ll ’ave written it all off as “lost due to enemy action” by now, and what ’e can’t sell in town’ll go to civvies in Derna an’ Tripoli.’ He paused. ‘I got a surprise for the Old Man.’

  He moved to the back of the lorry. Inside, lying on looted bedding, was a sleeping man wrapped in a blanket.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Clegg demanded.

  ‘’E reckons ’e’s an Australian. I once thought I’d like to emigrate to Australia.’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘All of me, you stupid sod! ’E says ’e’s a company sergeant major. I found ’im wanderin’ about at the edge of the town.’ Clegg took another look at the sleeping man. ‘How do you know he’s not an Italian spy?’

  Clutterbuck grinned. ‘No Italian spy I ever ’eard of could ’ave swore like ’e did.’

  As they talked, the man in the lorry opened his eyes and sat up. He was unkempt, thin-faced, unshaven and dressed in tattered khaki drill. He was staring puzzled at Clegg’s Italian jacket.