My God! What does he think we are? Circus stuntmen? thought Yule. He pulled up, leaving the outer wall well beneath, over the roof and banked tightly to come round on O’Neill’s tail. In his mirror he saw Sammy leeched close to him.
“Here we go.” O’Neill, usually unemotional on the R/T, was very chipper about this, as though giving them a treat. Yule saw his guns fire a long burst as he swooped inches above the trees and almost touched the outer wall. There were strike flashes from inside the factory: the west end was virtually one huge pair of doors, and they were wide apart, great steel affairs on tracks, which could not be closed in a hurry. And obviously no one had thought that any attack could come from this insane angle, with the trees and the high wall outside. A hundred yards ahead and almost brushing the building, the C.O. broke at the last split millisecond. Yule dropped a foot or two lower and let his bombs go. With his heart seeming to fill his chest and stop beating, he heaved the stick back and was enveloped in a cloud of smoke and particles of masonry and dust. A moment later he was staring straight up at the sky and knew he had cleared the tall building. Looking down, he saw that it had collapsed. Had it not, he would have hit the top storey and been killed. Then he saw Sammy burst through the mess of smoke and dust.
“Not bad, Green,” Fiver allowed. “All right, chaps, individual attacks on the bods running around outside, and save some for a squirt at the flak on the way out. One run each, and be quick.”
Reefing round, Yule saw a confusion of figures moving about the factory compound; but by the time he was able to line up for a strafing run none of them was left alive, so he climbed away with Sgt. Sampson still tucked into his starboard wing.
*
From a hilltop ten miles away, other eyes watched the fiery destruction of the factory at Culostretto with mixed feelings of despair and admiration.
At his astronomical telescope in the observatory on the roof of his palazzo, il Conte Stefano di Rossoni cried aloud, “Dio mio! Che pazzi! What madmen!” as he reflected on his several million lire investment in the factory; and “Ma che magnifici piloti!” as he paid tribute to the skill of the British airmen. He noted the squadron letters on the Spitfires’ fuselages and the individual letters of the three pilots who most excited his esteem. When the fighter-bombers had gone, the smoke and dust of their air strike hanging over the ruined plant, he limped two floors down the broad, sweeping staircase to the boudoir where his wife still stood by the window with a powerful pair of binoculars to her eyes.
The contessa had come up here to watch the attack when they heard it start, because it was the highest vantage point apart from the servants’ rooms in the attics and her husband’s observatory; and the latter was his exclusive preserve. She was as reverent about his seigniorial masculinity as he was.
The conte spent most of the day up there, since the Salerno landings, watching the sky, eagerly waiting to identify British and American aircraft and hoping to witness air battles.
He had guessed where his wife would go when the first sounds of gunfire reached her. “Marisa, did you see it all?” he asked.
Her eyes bright, she said, “It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. What elegant little aeroplanes...”
“Spitfires.” He used his curt professional voice, implying that he was party to some esoteric communion involving the Spitfire. “If only my squadron had been flying Spitfires when we were fighting in Spain...” He brandished his arms eloquently, suggesting that the Spanish Civil War would have ended much sooner in victory for Franco if he and his fellow Italian pilots had had these superb fighters with which to do battle against the Spanish Communist air force: a wretchedly small and ill-equipped body, although he always made them sound like a formidable adversary.
His resentment of Germany dated from the time when he had first seen the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt 109s in action in Spain and been denied them for his own squadron. His animosity had been nurtured by the contempt with which the German air crews treated their Italian comrades. He had had to stifle his grudge for six years, while he maintained his standing with the Fascist Government. Now at last he could give vent to it.
He tapped his gold-knobbed ebony cane against his right leg. “If I had been flying a Spitfire that day I was attacked by four of the enemy I would never have got this.” “This” was the stiff leg which was the legacy of two Spanish Communist machine-gun bullets in the knee from the one antiquated enemy fighter, not four, which had really challenged him that day. He made the greatest possible display of his injury and constantly complained that it had condemned him to a desk job instead of the front line command he would have preferred. His wife believed him; only an Italian woman would have.
At forty, the conte was thicker around the body than he would have been if his wound had not restricted the amount of exercise he could take. But, like the Chinese, he esteemed a certain degree of corpulence as a symbol of prosperous maturity. Standing nearly 6 ft tall, and self-consciously straight-backed, he felt he could carry a few extra kilos and centimetres without losing his figure. His abundant black hair was just beginning to show a touch of grey at the temples; which he felt made him, if possible, more attractive to women. His Roman tailor had adequately taken the place of his Savile Row cutters since 1940. His shoemaker in Naples was, to his taste, a trifle superior to any in St. James’s. The war had scarcely affected him. He had regretted abandoning his uniform, with its rows of decorations; but the Axis defeat in the Second Battle of Alamein in late October and early November 1942 had warned him that the Allies would win the war. Discretion suggested he should plead an honourable wound and have himself invalided out immediately. A brother colonel, closely related, who was a medical board president, had attended to that; and he had retired from his sinecure Air Ministry appointment in Rome to return to his estate near Naples.
Although he had invested in the factory whose destruction he had witnessed so admiringly, he did not think only of financial loss. There was much more than that to gain by severing his overt connection with the Government; and by the unexpected bonus of the air strike. This had prompted an idea: he would develop it into a definite proposition to make to the American officer: when that distant relative showed up.
He crossed the room to put an arm across his wife’s shoulders. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he often regretted that aristocratic custom and his own vanity about his virility prescribed that he must maintain at least one statutory mistress. He didn’t really need one. Marisa was everything he wanted. Even her Venetian lineage was more exalted and ancient than his own. Her creamy skin and Titian hair were as much his pride as hers. She was taller than any of the women of his own family, and the females of her kin did not run to fat like southerners. Her voice was softer than his sisters’ or cousins’, even than his dear and dreaded Mamma’s. She had borne him two handsome sons and a brace of lovely daughters, and she was still only twenty-eight years old. Ten years of marriage had not blunted their passion for each other.
Her eyes were shining, the pupils dilated; he recognised the signs. He had taken her on Safari in Kenya and been amazed by the violence of her lust on days when she had seen him shoot a lion, buffalo or elephant. The holocaust created by the Spitfires had manifestly stirred her in the same way. She flung her arms around him, bit his ear and cried, almost sobbing, “Lock the door... lock the door, Stefano.” He flung aside his stick. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but what had clocks to do with an amorous woman? He blessed the Spitfire pilots; and congratulated himself for his presence of mind in recording their identifications.
At lunch the conte and contessa discussed the news brought by their two guests, a neighbouring landowner and his wife, who had just returned from a visit to Rome. Their journey home had necessitated a long detour to the east across the Apennines, and back again, to keep well clear of German troop movements. The information they brought depressed the conte.
“The Germans have counterattacked stro
ngly,” his male visitor told him. “One has to admit it was brilliant. They fought their way to within half a mile of the beaches where the British and Americans had landed.
“How did that happen?”
“The Germans have managed to contain the Allies in two separate beach heads, and to hold the surrounding hills as well as the approach routes to the coast: thanks mostly to the 16th Panzer Division and the Hermann Göring Division. Their counterattack broke through the British line near La Molina pass. The British Commandos stopped them, fortunately. But the Germans re-took Battipaglia from the British and Persano from the Americans, forcing a general withdrawal night before last, the 13th.”
“Yesterday,” said the conte, “the air was full of British and American bombers and we could hear the bombs exploding even at this distance from Salerno. It sounded as though they had put every available aeroplane into the attack on the German troops surrounding their beach heads.”
“They’d need to, with General von Vietinghoff commanding the German forces against them.”
With more confidence than he felt, the conte said, “Even he can’t hold them back much longer.”
He knew that the Allies had expected to be in Naples by now. He had been counting on it, too. He was impatient to discharge the task given to him by the man in Naples who overshadowed his life and frightened him more than the Almighty Himself.
When the guests had gone Count di Rossoni and his countess went up to their bedroom for their habitual afternoon rest. It was a handsomely proportioned room with a fine painted ceiling whose colours seemed as fresh as when new two centuries ago. The pale Chinese carpet complemented ornate gilt and red plush furniture. An enormous bed under a silken canopy was as much a retreat from the cares of the world as an invitation to delight. Old and solid, its springs and mattresses were modern and the count lay back on it with a sigh of contentment when he joined his wife from his dressing room which led into their bedroom from the side opposite her boudoir. They each had their own bathrooms, adjoining: palatial, marble-walled, with gilded taps and vast mirrors, shelves on which were arrayed a multitude of jars and bottles, they were suitably sybaritic adjuncts to the focal point of the whole suite; the matrimonial bed.
“It is here that I get my best ideas,” the count whispered drowsily to his wife. She lay in the crook of his arm, a soft smile on her lips, her thoughts divided between her husband and her cicisbeo, the good-looking young lieutenant who had been on his staff at the Air Ministry. Nobody used the old fashioned word any longer, even in Venice, but that was what he was; her cicisbeo, not her lover. Her pet lapdog, her adorer, runner of errands, escort when her husband couldn’t or wouldn’t accompany her to some function or on a shopping trip. It was a beautiful word and a beautiful conception in its chivalry and purity. She had grown more than a little bored with the latter attribute and decided to move on to a closer relationship: when her husband had surprised her and thwarted her half-formed intention by abandoning his Service career.
“What ideas have you got now, stella mia?” she whispered.
“I’ve been thinking about those Spitfires.”
“Oh!” She had been expecting something else.
“The friends we need...”
“I know. We agreed about that...”
“I have the identification letters of the squadron...”
“The Spitfires?”
“Of course.” A touch of impatience. “I’ll get on to Intelligence and find out more about the squadron. Then I’ll invite them here.”
“But they could be anywhere. Aeroplanes can come from a hundred kilometres away...” She glanced up at his face and broke off in a giggle. “I’m sorry...”
“As you remind me, about my own profession, they may come from an aerodrome quite far from here. But I doubt it. They are ground-attack fighters, so they will be in support of the Army on this side of the country; and therefore within close range of the front line. Besides, there are very few aerodromes in these parts, and few places where temporary ones could be built.” With confidence he said, “They can’t be far from here.”
“But would they accept an invitation?”
Now it was his turn to smile. “The British are the strangest people in the world. That is because they are four nations, not one. And each nation has contributed something different to the British character. They are a mass of contradictions. They detest overt emotion or sentiment, yet they are great ones for sentiment. They must not be confused with the Americans, who are sentimental: there is a difference between sentiment and sentimentality; the difference between an acid sweet that can break your teeth, and a soft-centred mushy chocolate. The British respect tradition. They respect the profession of arms. They have a compulsion to band themselves in esoteric groups... clubs... regiments... squadrons... professions...”
“I love to listen to your divine voice, tesoro mio, but it is sending me to sleep... what has all that to do with inviting them here? They were our enemies for more than three years.”
“I am a wounded regular officer. I flew with Balbo. The R.A.F. was so impressed by Marshal Balbo that ever since he led his epic formation flights across the Atlantic... in which, may I remind you, I was proud to participate in the second one, in 1933... they have always referred to a large formation of aeroplanes as ‘a Balbo’; even in their official signals they will say “Such-and-such squadrons will carry out a Balbo at such-and-such a time and date”. I have seen it myself on that goodwill visit to England in 1939.”
“So, if we invite them here they will be glad to come because you are a great aviator, a wounded hero, a regular officer...?”
“That’s right: a full colonel commands respect even from his former enemies. Especially a wounded colonel.” Shot in the leg over Spain by a Communist volunteer from Argentina who had been an insurance clerk a year before and was flying a horrible old biplane that did not strictly merit a Certificate of Airworthiness and almost stalled from the recoil when its only two machine-guns were fired.
They both fell asleep, the count to dream of his three victories in air combat over Spain, all achieved with the help of his entire squadron against much smaller numbers of the enemy flying greatly inferior aircraft. Of the formal invitation he would issue to the officers of the Spitfire squadron. Of the entertainment he would provide for them. It would be up to Marisa to round up the most attractive girls of good family in the district; and he himself would attend to the recruitment of the more clean and presentable daughters and other appendages of his retainers and tenants. He would not degrade himself by encouraging an orgy, but he knew what young fighting men wanted and he would make it as easy as reasonably possible for them to have it.
The countess was the first to wake, and she amused herself as she often did by playing with his lustrous thick black hair and plaiting it into two little horns. The first time he had woken to find what she had done he had burst into angry accusations. “You are mocking me... who is the lover whom you have permitted to put horns on me? Why do you ridicule me?” and quite a bit more.
She had calmed him with laughter which was both nervous and gratified. “Darling... don’t be silly... that thought never entered my head... I just adore the way you look with those absurd little tufts sticking up... it makes you seem... younger, darling... you’re so patrician and stern in your good looks... I only wanted to make you look like a tousled little boy...” Still, what he’d said was an idea; and maybe Freud would have put an interesting interpretations on her whim, she pondered happily.
This afternoon she contented herself with running her fingers through the hair above his widow’s peak so that it rose in a cock’s comb which she knew would amuse him when he saw himself in the looking glass. She had told him, before, that it made him look like the devil, and he would understand the inference this time: his plans for ingratiating himself with the British and Americans were demoniacally subtle and long-sighted. It was his devious way of ensuring that the orders given to him by that dreadf
ul old man in Naples were carried out. She didn’t like to think about it. She shuddered and began to play with the hairs on his chest, which woke him.
As soon as his eyes half-opened, she bent close to him and said, “Stefano...?”
“M-m?”
“This cousin of yours...”
“Which one?”
“The American.”
His eyes opened fully and he looked cross. “He is not my cousin. He is the grandson of a man who was born on the wrong side of the blanket, to my grandfather’s second cousin; and packed off to America with the mother and her husband. The husband was induced to marry her when she became pregnant. The girl was the daughter of one of our tenant farmers. But he is not any cousin of mine.”
“But,” she reminded him, “he is involved in what you have been ordered to do for a certain party in Naples.”
“There’s no need to tell me that.”
“I’m frightened, Stefano.”
He attempted an indulgent laugh. “Why are you frightened?”
“Because that wicked old man has always frightened me if he so much as looks at me. And he refers to this American as your cousin.”
He tried a jest. “You mean he has il malocchio... the evil eye?”
“Don’t joke about it, Stefano. I’m frightened, that’s all.”
“Good connections with the American and the British will be a great help to us. And financially, we are going to have to get through a bad time before conditions in Italy improve. What I have to do for... for... the old gentleman in Naples will earn us dollars we can’t afford to sneer at. Besides, as you know, I have no option.”
She sighed. “When do you think the American officer will find his way here?”
“Not as soon as I’d like, the way the Germans are fighting back. I want to get this thing over and done with.”
“I wish you didn’t have to do it at all.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense: it’s my duty, and that’s all there is to be said about it; my duty. You know what that means, Marisa.”
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