He laughed loudly and obscenely, and I saw Monique wince. Then he leaned forward and stabbed an uncertain forefinger at me. “That’s where you come in,” he said. “The old lady’s suspicious. She thinks that if I’m doing as well as I say in my letters there ought to be no reason why I shouldn’t take a holiday and go and see her. You must go and see her when you get back to England. Tell her you’ve seen me. Tell her anything you like about me—anything, that is, except the truth. And tell her I’m dead. Tell her I was run over—an accident. Tell her you saw it happen and were with me when I died in hospital. I’ll forge all the necessary papers, including a will, and I’ll have a firm of lawyers send her a legacy. Tell her that I spoke of her with my dying breath and that you promised to come and see her. You’re the officer type—she’ll believe it all coming from a bloke like you. She won’t expect an ex-naval officer to be lying, will she? She’ll believe you. That way she’ll never know the truth. She’ll never know how I’ll really die.”
“You can’t do this,” I said. “It’s horrible.”
He laughed at that. “Horrible! Who are you to judge whether it’s horrible or not. A mother will forgive anything, but not her son mucking around with bad women. You’ll be doing a great kindness. And you’ll do it because you’re in a fix and you’ve made yourself responsible for the girl here.”
I said, “I’d do it anyway if I were convinced it were the right thing to do. I don’t need a bribe to do a kindness for some one.”
“You don’t need a bribe, eh?” he sneered. “Well, you’re bloody getting one, whether you like it or not. I wouldn’t trust any one to do this for me unless I held their conscience in fee. You’ll do it for me because it is a bargain between us—not as a damned kindness. Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t take charity. I’ve fallen low—God-dammed bloody low—but not as low as that.”
He propelled his chair forward until his face was so close to mine that I could smell his liquored breath and sweaty body. “Would it interest you to know that I forged papers two days ago for a tank landing craft? It is a strange coincidence that they should come to me, except of course that I’ve got something of a corner in this sort of business around these parts. And would it interest you to know that the original papers were made out in the name of Trevedra?”
I stared at him in amazement. At first I could not believe it. But he had nothing to gain by lying. “You mean you forged papers for my own ship?”
He nodded, his lips drawn back in a sneering grin.
“Who did you forge them for?”
“I never divulge the names of my clients. That is a cardinal rule in this sort of game. She was purchased by an Italian firm from McCrae for the coastal trade. She is now known by an Italian name. I know what she is now called. And, moreover, I know where she is lying up at this moment.”
“It’s fantastic!” I said. I was just thinking aloud.
He shrugged his shoulders. “If you live a little longer in Naples,” he said, “you will get used to the fantastic.”
“Tell me one thing,” I said, “did they buy her for running arms?”
He did not answer my question, but shouted for Anna again. “Bring my Bible and another bottle,” he told her. When they arrived he poured us out more drinks. Then he said, “I’m still Presbyterian enough to believe that a man who makes an oath with his hand laid upon the Book will not break faith. Put your hand on the Book, man, and repeat after me.”
I hesitated. But there was no point in refusing. He would die sooner or later, and it would not be a pleasant death. Who was I to judge whether his decision was right or wrong. It would serve no purpose for his mother to know the truth about his life. And whatever the man had done—and I had no doubt that he had told us but a tithe of the rottenness that had been in his life—at least he had this one spark of decency, that he wished his mother to die in the belief that her son was the son she had known eight years ago. It was difficult to refuse to do what he asked. It would be refusing perhaps the one decent gesture he had made during the past few years of his life.
“All right,” I said. “But please understand that, apart from the information you can apparently give me, I would have done this anyway if you had wished it this way.”
He clicked his tongue. “Never mind about your high and bloody mighty principles, Cunningham. Just place your hand on the Book and repeat after me: ‘I swear by Almighty God and all that I hold dear to me, to visit your mother and tell her of your death and carry to her whatever last messages you direct.’”
I repeated it after him. And when I had finished, he said, “And may the curse of my body rest upon you if you fail to fulfil this charge.”
He sat silent for a moment after that. Then at length he said, “And now you’ll be wanting to know where your ship is.” He spun his chair round and propelled it over to a desk in the far corner of the room. He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and for a moment or two the silence of the room was broken only by the scratching of his pen across the surface of the paper.
Then he slid back silently across the room to me and handed me the sheet. “That is my mother’s address at Ballachulish and her name. Below it I have put the location of your ship, the name of the man who was behind the outfit that ‘acquired’ her and also the name of a trattoria and a time. That time is for to-morrow. Go to the trattoria and I will have a man meet you there. He is known as Il Piccolo Polipo. That means The Little Octopus. He will help you. The people who have acquired the ship want her for running arms. They represent Big Business and neo-Fascism. I am surprised that you did not get on better with them. They would have paid you good money for the ship rather than take the risk of stealing it. The man you will meet at the trattoria calls himself a communist. But I think you would find difficulty in understanding his political ideology. He heads a band of men who were once of the partigiani. It would not be good for him if neo-Fascism became too powerful in Napoli. He will wish to know where the leader is. Tell him he will be for the next three days at the villa of the banker, Mordini, on Monte Argentario. In return for that information I will see that he helps you to get your ship back. It is in any case to his advantage. If they have that ship for running arms then they will be all-powerful in this area—that is underground. But then the underground is not so far off the surface in this city as it is in most others.”
But I was scarcely listening to what he said. I had opened the folded slip of notepaper. In spidery copperplate writing the name Del Ricci caught my eye.
And immediately everything fell into place.
I felt a great relief. It is not nice to be forced to consider a friend no better than a crook.
The location of the Trevedra was given as Porto Giglio. “Where is Porto Giglio?” I asked him.
“It is a port on the island of Giglio about twelve miles off the coast just south of Elba,” he said. “Il Piccolo Polipo will arrange for a boat and also transport up to Santo Stefano, which will be your port of embarkation.” He passed his hand wearily across his brow. “When you see my mother, tell her that it was to-day I died.” He looked across at the girl. “Good-bye, Monique,” he said. “Pray for me sometimes. And if it’s any satisfaction to you, your visits brought light into the darkness of this room. I am glad to have had some part in getting you back to your mother.”
She went across to him and took his hand. Then she bent quickly and kissed his forehead.
We left then. And in the moonlit street outside I saw that she was crying. “He was kind,” she said, not troubling to hide her tears. “He was kind and he was lonely.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE LITTLE OCTOPUS
THE NEXT MORNING at twelve-thirty I went alone to the trattoria in the Vicoletto Berio. I sat at an empty table and ordered a glass of vino. Shortly afterwards a swarthy man with aquiline features came over from the bar. “Permesso, Signore,” he said and sat down opposite me.
He asked me my name. And when I told him and had shown him the piece of paper
on which the location of the Trevedra had been written the night before, he told me what I had to do. He spoke softly and naturally. “I have been waiting to get this Del Ricci for a long time,” he said. “At his villa at Posilipo he has too many of his friends around him. But now he has gone into the country and his friends are not with him. I was told that you would tell me where he was?”
“He is at the villa of Mordini, the banker,” I said. Then, remembering what I had been told the previous night, I added, “The villa is on Monte Argentario.”
“Good!” he said. “That is very good. I know where it is. It is near Santo Stefano and that is where we must embark for the Giglio. We shall leave to-night. How many of you are there?”
I told him three. “Myself, one of my crew and a girl.”
He nodded as though that was what he had expected. “Be outside the Castello Nuovo at midnight where the road comes up from the docks. You cannot mistake it. There is a bridge over the road. A truck will come up from the docks. It will be a five-ton Fiat. I shall be on it. Don’t worry if it is a little late. We shall have flour to load. You will know the truck because the driver will switch his headlights on and off three times as he comes up the hill. If all goes well the ship will be yours again the following night. You must be prepared to sail as soon as she has been liberated.” His lips twisted on the word “liberated” into a sardonic smile. “Is it agreed?”
When I nodded, he got to his feet. “Arrivedela, Signore.”
And that was how it was fixed. I didn’t know his name, what he was or who he was. Just a drink in a café and everything had been arranged without my lifting a finger. I was left with a feeling of astonishment. I was not accustomed to the underground organisation of foreign ports.
When I told Boyd the plan, his reaction was the same, “I don’t get it,” he said. “This bloke Del Ricci pinches our ship. There’s another bloke around the joint who hates his guts. An’ just because we can tell ’im where this Del Ricci is, he’s prepared to act as Santa Claus an’ get the bleedin’ ship back for us.” His small leathery face was puckered with bewilderment as he shook his head and said, “Stands ter reason a bloke’d want payment for a thing like that, especially in this God-forsaken country. But there ain’t no point in our worrying about it like, is there? I mean, we ain’t got nothink to lose.”
He was right there. The only thing I’d got to lose was my life—or my liberty if we were arrested for attempting to seize by force something that really belonged to us. I had no illusions about what was going to happen. The Little Octopus wasn’t taking an interest in us out of kindness. This was gang warfare and the party wasn’t likely to be a picnic.
We were at the Castello Nuovo shortly before midnight. It was almost cool with a slight breeze coming in from the sea. The great square bulk of the castle crouched black against the moonlit waters of Naples Bay, and beyond it the dim outline of Vesuvius was raised towards the sky.
I glanced down at Monique, who was standing beside me, the sweep of her fair hair stirring gently in the breeze. I was wondering what she thought about it all. She sensed my gaze and smiled up at me. There was no fear in her eyes.
For some reason that annoyed me. “We’re going to have trouble on this trip,” I told her.
“Do you mean there will be a fight?” She nodded her head seriously. “But you will get your ship back.” And she smiled up at me happily again as though life were as simple as all that.
Then the truck came snoring up the road from the docks, its headlights flickering yellow in the white light of the moon.
The Little Octopus leaned out of the driver’s cab as it pulled up. “Get in the back,” he said, “and make yourselves comfortable. It will be a long drive.”
He was quite right about that. The truck was heavily loaded with sacks of flour and made at best not more than twenty miles an hour. There were two Italians in the back. They had settled down to the boredom of being jolted around throughout the night. They nodded as we climbed aboard. But they did not speak. As we topped the hill out of Naples and the sprawling outline of Capri was lost among the trees that lined the road, I adjusted the sacks on which we were resting so that Monique could sleep comfortably. Then I settled myself beside her.
I lay awake for some time watching the trees sweep past and gazing at the tapering vista of the road behind us running like a white sword across the country. Then gradually my senses dulled to the roar of the engine and I dozed off.
It must have been an hour or so later that I woke with a feeling that one of the sacks had fallen across me. I tried sleepily to push it away. My hand touched warm soft-curving flesh and I woke to find it was Monique and not a sack.
She had slipped over on to me with the jolting of the truck. Her shoulder was pressed into my belly and her face, with eyes serenely closed and lashes black against the pale skin, was on my chest. I didn’t move my hand from the curve of her breast. I just lay quiet for fear that I should disturb her. If she woke she would be scared at the touch of my hand. And I knew in that moment, with the perception one often has when one has just woken up, that I didn’t want her to be scared. I only wanted her to lie there and to feel the warmth of her against my body, to feel the woman of her and pretend that she was lying there because she wanted to.
But some sixth sense must have warned her that I was awake. Suddenly her eyelids flickered open like shutters and her grey eyes, wide and startled, were looking up into mine.
There was no time to take my hand from her breast or to close my eyes and pretend that I was asleep.
She stared up into my face for a moment. Then suddenly she smiled. It was a warm slow luxurious smile—a smile that acknowledged all there has ever been between a man and a woman. She put her hand over mine where it held her breast. Then, still smiling, she closed her eyes and went to sleep again.
I didn’t dare move for a long time after that. I just lay there, my whole body conscious of the shape of her, thinking about her and about the future. For she had suddenly become very important to me.
In the end I fell asleep. And when I woke again the sun was up and she was sitting against the tailboard combing the flour out of her hair with a comb she had borrowed from Boyd.
We stopped for a snack at a trattoria just outside Rome. And then we drove on as the sun climbed the blue bowl of the sky. It was past midday before we turned off the main road and dipped down through Orbetello, with its shattered seaplane base where Balbo had set off on his record-breaking flight, to the causeway that joins Monte Argentario to the mainland.
The sea on either side of the causeway was white like a mirror. A line of telegraph poles strode across it like men on stilts wading to the shore and bamboo fish pens cut the water into sections as hedges separate fields.
The truck bore right along the northern shore of the peninsula. The road deteriorated into a track bull-dozed two years ago through demolition rubble and the interior of the truck became hazy with flour as the sacks rocked and bounced. Then suddenly it was dark. The temporary road had taken to the railway and we were in a tunnel.
In the sunlight again we climbed a headland and below us lay Porto Santo Stefano, a hillside of brown stone ruins crumbling to the brilliant blue of the sea where the astonished masts of a sunken schooner showed bare and and white.
The little port was smashed to hell and had never been rebuilt. Yet there was a strange beauty in its ruins, for the empty shells of what had once been houses showed the red and blue and green of painted interiors. Here, against the brown of the broken stone, was every colour of the rainbow. The effect was of an artist’s palette.
We did not go into the port, but dropped down the shoulder of the hill to a broken concrete jetty where an island schooner was moored stern-on to the hard of what had once been the waterfront. Here the truck stopped and we climbed stiffly out. The two men who had been with us in the back lowered a sack of flour over the tail-board. It hit the concrete with a heavy metallic thud.
The Litt
le Octopus shepherded them aboard across the plank that was roped from the hard to the stern of the schooner, and we followed him. He introduced us to a watery-eyed old ruffian. This was the skipper. His breath smelt of garlic and he spat tobacco juice on to the decks that were high with the smell of fish and vino and salt water. Grey hair stood out on the dirt-lined scrawny skin of his neck like stubble and his teeth were black stumps in a framework of cracked lips and brown-stained straggling moustache.
We had a meal in a cabin below decks that was so stiflingly hot that I could feel the sweat trickling down the sides of my body. There were anchovies and olives and tasteless Mediterranean fish with brown bread and a lobster and hard cheese, all washed down with Aleatico from Elba.
When we had finished, the Little Octopus advised us to get some sleep on deck. “You’ll be sailing at midnight,” he said. “And you’ll need to be fresh.”
The flour from the lorry was being loaded. The Little Octopus, with his two henchmen, their pockets bulging suspiciously, disappeared with a fishing net in a small boat.
Monique and I stood against the wooden bulwarks of the schooner and watched the boat till the dhow-like sail disappeared beyond the headland.
“Where is he going?” Monique asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. I did not know. But I had an uneasy feeling that necessity was getting us mixed up in something pretty unpleasant. We went for’ard and joined Boyd under the shade of a sail that had been roughly rigged as an awning.
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