Up For Grabs

by Max Hennessy

  Dampier gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘And then?’

  Morton smiled. ‘Perhaps they could be allowed their luna di miele – their honeymoon – with me picking them up later with the car.’

  ‘I suppose’ – Dampier was still faintly hopeful – ‘there’s no way we could leave her behind.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Caccia had finally made up his mind. ‘There isn’t.’

  Dampier looked helplessly at Rafferty and flung up his hands. ‘How did I get into this?’ he said. ‘They’ll crucify me when I get back.’

  Rafferty smiled. ‘You never know, sir,’ he pointed out. ‘They might recommend you for promotion.’

  Chapter 2

  As it happened, it turned out to be more difficult than they’d imagined, and a series of unexpected events rather changed their plans.

  Morton returned from an interview with a subdued and an at first none-too-willing Scarlatti – with lunch all the same, however, of pasta, parma ham and lacrimae Christi – to say that the second Italian push was due to start on Thursday. Unable to forget that Morton now apparently commanded a unit whose equipment was almost totally his, Scarlatti had been inclined to be wary but had finally been won round by promises of a helping hand for his family’s business after the end of the war – or even before – and a strong hint that the equipment he assumed had come illicitly from his dump had in fact come illicitly from the dump run by his old enemy Colonel Ancillotti, in Derna.

  ‘And there was no air raid on at the time it disappeared,’ Morton pointed out cheerfully. ‘He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.’

  He was surprised how delighted Scarlatti was at the news. The idea of one in the eye for his old enemy pleased him enormously, and after that it took only a brandy or two before he unwittingly confirmed the date they’d picked up.

  He made no bones about his doubts, nevertheless. ‘The Duce,’ he said lugubriously, ‘fixes dates, postpones them and abandons them, then picks them up again as if he had a smoothly working military machine, which we all know it isn’t. Last time we came to a standstill because there was a shortage of shells and our so-called armoured divisions consisted of nothing more than a regiment of Bersaglieri, a regiment of artillery and three battalions of sardine tins on wheels.’

  ‘At least, sir,’ Rafferty pointed out as he listened to Morton’s report, ‘it proves the girl can be trusted. What about the other feller? Faiani? What did he have to say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Morton said. ‘He hardly said a word. He’s given up, I think.’

  ‘And when do we get the other half of the map?’ Dampier asked.

  ‘After the wedding,’ Morton announced. ‘I’ve seen the girl.’ He smiled. ‘She wants to marry Caccia. In fact, I’d say she was determined to marry Caccia. But Scarlatti’s turned up trumps and offered to take her into his dump and let her choose a dress from some he’s got there. They were about the only things that weren’t pinched or destroyed during the raid. Some of them are rather splendid, I gather. Belonged to mistresses of various senior Italian officers who got snatched up in our push last year. Nobody’s ever claimed them so he says she can have one as a wedding present. He’s also offered a bottle or two of champagne for the reception.’

  Dampier’s eyebrows shot up. ‘They’re having a reception? Who’re the guests, for God’s sake? Hitler? Mussolini?’

  They were still discussing the arrangements when Clegg stuck his head through the tent door.

  ‘Sir. Trouble. There’s a car on the way. I think it’s that German general again.’

  Morton shouted for Caccia and headed out of the tent. The car came down the hill trailing a cloud of yellow dust. As it stopped Morton saluted, briskly at attention.

  Erwin’s smile was friendly as he climbed out. ‘So, tenente,’ he said. ‘We meet again. We thought we’d lost you. We hadn’t seen you in your usual place in the town.’

  ‘Instructions to move into the desert,’ Morton said smoothly. ‘To be nearer the troops. What can I do for your excellency?’

  Erwin gestured. ‘You might call it a favour. As you doubtless know, we shall be on the move again on Thursday.’

  Morton nodded, noting that Erwin was also unwittingly confirming what Caccia’s girl had said.

  ‘I feel like a last little celebration,’ Erwin went on. ‘When we spotted you just now, the idea occurred to me. I’ve enjoyed our stay near Zuq. It’s been what might be called a touch of civilization after the desert, and Captain Stracka and myself are intending to do a last little bit of painting at the end of the wadi before we leave. Obergefreiter Bomberg has undertaken to make it worthwhile and has acquired wine and a few extra rations. A cold collation eaten as we paint. Perhaps you’ll join us for a drink before we start?’

  ‘I’d be delighted, excellency.’

  ‘One final thing.’ Erwin smiled. ‘Our gramophone’s given up the ghost. Sand in the works. It gets everywhere, as I’m sure you’ve discovered. Aeroplane engines. Tank turrets. Gramophone motors. Mozart begins to sound like a cat with its head caught in a set of railings. Then Stracka had an idea: your splendid singer. Could you arrange for him to sing for us?’

  Morton’s knees went weak. He could just imagine Jones the Song serenading a German general. If anything would bring on one of his headaches, that would.

  ‘We have a gramophone, excellency,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Perhaps we could lend it to you.’

  Erwin waved a hand. ‘No, no,’ he insisted. ‘Portable gramophones are no good anyway. They always sound tinny and I expect yours is no better than ours. We’d prefer your singer.’

  Great God in the Mountains, Morton thought. Aloud, he said, ‘He doesn’t sing in German, excellency. He’s not a professional. Just an Italian who has a voice.’

  ‘Then let him sing in Italian. Surely there are Neapolitan songs that he knows. Stracka and I want only to be entertained for a while before we disappear into the desert again. This time we either reach Cairo or else we get nowhere and I suspect it might go on for a long time.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the general be happier with a German orchestra?’

  Erwin eyed him quizzically, then he gestured. ‘I know German orchestras,’ he said flatly. ‘Fiddles, drums, piano accordions, guitars and clarinets. Everything they play sounds like a victory march. Around 6.00 p.m. tomorrow then,’ he went on firmly. ‘We’ll arrive around 4.00 p.m., do a little painting – we still have to get the southern view of the desert over that pink gravel – and then two hours later, when we’re in need of a break, you must join us for your drink, and your singer can entertain us.’

  * * *

  Jones the Song put on a fit of hysteria to beat all fits of hysteria.

  Company Sergeant Major Fee, listening with interest, put his bewilderment into words. ‘A bloody German general?’ he said.

  ‘No worse than an English general,’ Clegg observed. ‘Probably neither of ’em knows anything about it.’

  Jones the Song was in full spate. ‘What’s a good Welshman doing, bach,’ he yelled, ‘singing to a German general? Why, aye, I shall lose my voice with nerves, see, and he’ll want to know what’s happened, and will come and look!’

  Dampier interrupted the indignation. ‘Couldn’t you have put him off?’ he asked Morton.

  ‘Would you have tried to put off a German general?’ Morton said sharply. ‘Under the circumstances.’

  Dampier had to concede the point.

  ‘Dhu, I shall have one of my headaches,’ Jones wailed. ‘Sure of it I am.’

  ‘You’d better not,’ Dampier warned. ‘There’s a lot hanging on this concert of yours – if only to keep the swine from investigating us too closely.’

  ‘Can’t we just up sticks and bugger off?’ Clegg asked. ‘What about Caccia?’

  ‘We could hit him with something hard.’

  Dampier had to admit that it sounded much more sensible than what was being planned. But he was a man of uprightness and integrity – more important, he was a rea
list, a good soldier and a patriot, who believed in putting first things first.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We must honour our promise. Besides,’ he added, ‘we need that map. It contains the information we need.’

  Jones flapped his hands. He looked like an excited and rather grubby gnome. ‘What’ll I sing? I don’t know any German songs.’

  ‘He’s not expecting German songs,’ Morton pointed out. ‘He’s expecting Italian songs.’

  ‘Dhu, I don’t know any of them either!’

  ‘You sang “Ave Maria” in Italian. I bet you know “Santa Lucia”.’

  ‘My mam used to sing it. She called it “Bright Stars of Italy”.’

  ‘I’ll write the words down for you. Erwin’s Italian’s as limited as yours.’ With the walking stick he had taken to carrying, Morton slapped the smart Italian field boots he’d obtained from Scarlatti’s dump. ‘Can you read music?’

  Jones drew himself up to his full scruffy height. ‘All Welshmen can read music, man.’

  ‘Right then. I’ll get Scarlatti to find something.’

  Jones desperately sought an escape. ‘What about accompaniment?’

  ‘Clegg’ll help. We’ve got a piano accordion among the Ratbags’ effects.’

  Clegg shied like a startled foal, but in the end he agreed and, as Morton had expected, Scarlatti was able to produce a book of popular Italian songs, several of which Jones discovered he knew the English version.

  ‘There’s just one thing, boyo,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to stand up in front of him and sing.’

  ‘What the hell are you going to do?’ Morton snapped. ‘Lie on your back?’

  Jones’s grubby little fists clenched. ‘I’m a Welshman,’ he protested. ‘Llewelyn ap Iorwerth wouldn’t stand up in front of an invader and sing.’

  ‘I’ll bet Llewelyn ap Bloody Thing never served in the Western Desert,’ Clinch said.

  Jones gave them an agonized glance. ‘Look you,’ he admitted, ‘it’s not that exactly. I’d be scared. I’d lose me voice.’

  Morton had an idea. ‘Suppose,’ he said, ‘that we arrange for you to sing out of sight?’

  Dampier studied Jones. Tatty wisps of greasy black hair stuck out from under the oversize Italian cap he was wearing, his shorts fitted where they touched and there was a rent in the sleeve of his shirt. ‘It might be better if he were out of sight,’ he observed. ‘No self-respecting general would want anyone as scruffy as he is singing alongside his table.’

  Jones looked indignant but Morton grinned.

  ‘You can just imagine it, can’t you?’ Dampier went on. ‘Jones leaning over to croon in his ear and a button dropping off his trousers into his soup.’

  ‘And suppose he found out he was British?’ Clegg added. ‘We’d probably lose the war as a result.’

  It was going to be a tight programme for Morton with Caccia, the only other Italian-speaker, occupied with getting married, but Rafferty, as usual, was ready with the answer. ‘I’ve worked out a schedule,’ he said, his sly shadowy smile appearing to mock them all. ‘The Humber will take Driver Caccia and Corporal Morton to the wedding. In the morning, of course, because the bridegroom is due to go to war that evening. Corporal Morton will attend the reception, returning here for when Erwin arrives around four. He’ll then dance attendance on the Germans until the singin’s finished, when he’ll return to collect Driver Caccia and his girl after their wedding night. Held a little earlier than normal, of course, but under the circumstances I presume they don’t need it to be dark.’

  ‘He’s going to be pretty occupied,’ Dampier growled.

  Nevertheless, he thought, despite the rushing around, Morton was going to have all the fun. Drinking champagne at Caccia’s reception and German hock at Erwin’s little celebration down the wadi. In spite of being a full colonel, he, Dampier, hadn’t got much out of the adventure except a bad back.

  Chapter 3

  The RAF came over again that night, but apart from a few bombs on the airstrip near the Wadi Sghiara and a few in the harbour as usual, 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit were never in any danger. It kept them awake for a lot of the night, however, and Clegg decided it was going to be a busy day. Fortunately for him, he had no idea how busy.

  With the aid of Clegg’s hairbrush and comb, one of Clutterbuck’s many spare shirts and a spot of shoe polish borrowed from Dampier, in no time they had Caccia tarted up to meet his bride.

  ‘Pity you have to wear the bloody King of Italy’s uniform instead of the King of England’s, old comrade, bosom friend and pot companion,’ Clegg observed critically as he walked round Caccia, tugging at his jacket.

  Sergeant Major Fee watched them as if they were mad. ‘You really mean it?’ he grinned. ‘He really is going to marry an Italian sheila?’

  ‘Why not?’ Clegg asked. ‘Italian women have the same complement of legs, arms, eyes and odds and ends as any other sheila.’

  ‘But, Jesus, Italians are bloody useless!’

  ‘It won’t make much difference either way. Marriage hardens the arteries whoever you’re married to.’

  ‘Stone me eyes right and fours about,’ Caccia said indignantly. ‘It’s the girl I’m going to marry you’re talking about!’

  ‘I know,’ Fee agreed. ‘That’s why I’m talking about her.’

  ‘Yes, and you’re going at it like a load of mad dogs, too! All that about Italians being useless.’

  ‘Well, they are, cobber,’ Fee said. ‘We all know that. We’ve been fighting ’em ever since we came into the war. What do you want to go and marry an Italian sheila for?’

  ‘She’s got class,’ Caccia snarled. ‘Italian or no Italian!’

  ‘It’s a sort of diplomatic gesture,’ Clegg pointed out. ‘She’s got a map with the Italian order of battle tattooed on her chest. All their gun emplacements, minefields and what have you.’

  ‘Which she won’t let him see,’ Clinch added, ‘unless he makes her an honest woman.’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ Caccia snorted.

  Jones the Song joined in delightedly. After all the tormenting he’d suffered from Caccia, he was overjoyed at his predicament. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, boy,’ he said.

  Despite the teasing and embarrassment, when it came to the point, however, and now that the moment had come, Caccia wasn’t very worried about his future. ‘She’ll be good in the shop,’ he said.

  Morton appeared, decked out in his Italian lieutenant’s uniform. Producing a small bunch of red, white and green ribbons, he solemnly pinned it to the breast pocket of the Italian sergeant’s jacket Caccia was wearing.

  ‘Sorry there aren’t any carnations,’ he said. ‘But I suppose this will do.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t wear carnations when they’re married in Italy,’ Clinch observed.

  ‘Perhaps they carry a bust of Mussolini in one hand,’ Clegg suggested. ‘And a few sticks of spaghetti in the other.’

  ‘Now I’ve seen everything,’ Fee said as they pronounced Caccia ready. ‘A Pom dressed in an Italian uniform going off to marry an Italian sheila behind enemy lines.’

  ‘Oh, there’s more to come,’ Morton said cheerfully. ‘Tonight, remember, we have Jones the Song serenading a German general.’

  Wearing a red, white and green sash, a small man with dyed hair and a big belly met them on the steps of the battered Palazzo Municipale.

  ‘I am Carloni, Gianpiero, avvocato,’ he announced. ‘I am the mayor.’

  He stood framed in the large splinter-pitted doorway, between two carved stone fasces and beneath a carved Italian eagle. On the walls on either side someone had painted stalwart slogans from Mussolini’s speeches, and there were a few sombre printed notices for locally born Italians who had been killed pasted to the walls as signs of mourning.

  But the sun was out, the wind was not blowing to fill everybody’s eyes with grit, and the mayor shook hands with Caccia and Morton. Clegg, who was driving, sat rigidly in the Humber. ‘It’s a long time
since I conducted a marriage ceremony,’ the mayor said, leading the way into his office. Above his head was a picture of Mussolini – prognathous jaw thrust out, eyes fixed in a stare of determination – being aggressive under a steel helmet.

  ‘There are few marriages in Zuq these days,’ the mayor went on. ‘All the men have gone away. The last one was an officer from a Blackshirt battalion who married a widow from Derna. It was very elaborate. Flags. Saluting. Heel clicking. Very impressive,’ he ended in a flat voice to show how little impressed he was.

  They were waiting on the steps when Scarlatti drove up in his Lancia. He was sitting alongside the driver and as he saw Morton he leapt out at once. By this time, under Morton’s influence he had abandoned the rigid straight-armed Roman salute for Morton’s languid British-type flick of the hand. Morton glanced about him warily.

  ‘Where’s Faiani?’ he asked. ‘Is he coming?’

  ‘Someone has to stay behind,’ Scarlatti said. ‘To look after the shop. I told him he could take the afternoon off but he said he was busy. Occupied with a signal from Rome about something.’

  In the back of the car were Rosalba, her uncle and another girl, who turned out to be Teresa Gelucci. The dress from Scarlatti’s store was a confection of subdued yellow that suited Rosalba’s dark skin and black hair and, with the low neck, tight skirt and the posy of wilting flowers she carried, she looked remarkably pretty. Caccia decided that his mother would approve. The bridesmaid was wearing what looked like a borrowed dress many times darned, and starched and ironed until it was shiny enough to pick up the sun. Barbieri was clad in his best black suit, white shirt and black tie and looked as if he were dressed for a funeral. But there was a suppressed excitement in him, so unlike his normal depressed gloom Caccia was puzzled.

  Sidling alongside, Barbieri laid his finger to his nose. ‘I have petrol,’ he announced quietly. ‘Enough to last me for weeks if I’m careful. From the Venezia Armoured Division.’ He made a spitting gesture. ‘Armoured division? The British will make mincemeat of them.’ The smile returned. ‘One hundred and twenty litres. I had brandy. From the dump on the night of the air raid. It was good for barter.’ He kissed his fingertips. ‘British petrol,’ he ended. ‘In beautiful square silver cans.’