Up For Grabs

by Max Hennessy

  Barbieri studied the Italian sergeant’s jacket Caccia was wearing and the Italian forage cap he clutched in his nervous hands. ‘Why him?’ he said contemptuously. ‘Why don’t you pick yourself someone with a good future.’

  ‘He has a future! Mamma mia, what a future!’

  ‘An Italian soldier?’ Barbieri made a spitting movement with his mouth. ‘Italian soldiers have no future. If they’re not starved to death or killed by the stupidity of the Duce, they’re starved to death or killed by the stupidity of their generals. In the last war they dressed us in puttees to which the mud clung so that we marched about with two great balls of clay at the ends of our legs. Italian soldiers never have a future. You should pick yourself a German.’

  Rosalba made a spitting gesture. ‘You think they have a future? With that monster Hitler?’

  ‘At least they wear good boots.’

  ‘They will be beaten by the Anglish.’

  ‘All right then!’ Barbieri gestured wildly. ‘Why not an English? Your cousin Cecilia found an English, and nowadays she has a big house in the country and a Rolls-Royce.’

  Max Donatello’s family, Caccia decided, had either suddenly started doing well or Cecilia Neri had been spinning some tall yarns.

  ‘There is much money in—’ Barbieri stopped dead and slapped his forehead. ‘Why are we speaking in English?’ Rosalba made a sweeping gesture at Caccia. ‘Because Arturo is my innamorato. My lover.’

  ‘So what has that to do with speaking English?’

  ‘Arturo is Anglish.’

  Barbieri’s jaw dropped and his eyes bulged. ‘English? He’s an English?’

  ‘Part of the Great Distance Desert Gruppo.’

  Barbieri’s head was swinging from right to left in alarm, his eyes staring, as if police were pouring in at every door and window. ‘Mamma mia,’ he wailed. ‘Get him out of here! They’ll find out! They’ll shoot me! They’ll shoot you! Him, too, I expect! If the Germans find out, they’ll send the Gestapo to tear out our fingernails.’

  ‘Shut up, uncle,’ Rosalba said coldly. ‘He’s going soon.’

  ‘Tell him not to come back.’

  ‘Arturo will come back. He speaks perfect Italian. He is Italian. Well – Anglish-Italian. His family are very wealthy. They have the big food store in London. They have many lorries to carry the food about the city. They deliver to all parts of the country. They are never without food. Not even in wartime. They drink wine – good Italian wine – with every meal.’

  Barbieri calmed down abruptly. ‘They do?’

  ‘Arturo is the only son. He will inherit all. Think of it, uncle: a vast store. A fleet of lorries.’

  ‘Mamma mia!’

  Barbieri swallowed, then slowly he began to smile. ‘Perhaps it will be all right,’ he said. ‘Perhaps, if we’re careful and say nothing, nobody will find out.’ He paused, scratching at his beard. ‘Perhaps we should celebrate. Have we not another bottle of that white Sicilian wine somewhere?’

  ‘It’s gone. Arturo drank it.’

  Barbieri gave Caccia a sour look, but it only lasted a second. ‘No matter. When I went to Derna I brought back some more Castelli Romani. And why not make us some spaghetti? I think we should celebrate.’

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  When Caccia slipped back into camp the following morning, he was looking worried. After a while, he sought out Clegg, who was sitting on a toolbox drinking a dixie of coffee with Company Sergeant Major Fee. The Australian was recovering rapidly and even beginning, like the rest of them, to enjoy the situation in which they found themselves.

  ‘Cleggy,’ Caccia said. ‘I want to see the Old Man.’

  Clegg looked up. ‘Fancy a spot of leave then?’

  ‘I want to see the Old Man,’ Caccia said stubbornly. Clegg put down the dixie. ‘What’s up? Something wrong? What you been up to? That girl you been seeing?’

  ‘I think I’d better see the Old Man.’

  ‘You sound like a gramophone record. Okay, go and see him.’

  ‘I’m trying to do it right,’ Caccia said indignantly. ‘You’re supposed to go through the sergeant, aren’t you? You’re a sergeant.’

  Clegg grinned. ‘I hardly ever noticed it. That’s only so there was somebody to speak up for the Ratbags.’

  ‘Well, stop looking at me like I’m something hanging off your boot. Start speaking. For me.’

  Clegg looked puzzled. ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll go and see Morton.’

  ‘Not Morton. He’s not the Old Man.’

  ‘He behaves as if he was.’

  ‘I want to see the proper old man. Dampier. Morton’s just a corporal.’

  Clegg eyed him, glanced at Fee, and began to head for the colonel’s tent. ‘All right, then: Dampier. I’ll go and see Rafferty. He’ll know what to do.’

  Caccia looked gloomy. ‘I’ll bet he won’t know what to do this time,’ he said.

  * * *

  A little later, Rafferty strolled over to where Caccia was waiting. ‘There’s something on your mind, lad,’ he said. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘I’ll talk to the CO, sir.’

  ‘I’m a warrant officer. I’m supposed to be here to save him work.’

  ‘Sir, Colonel Dampier hasn’t got any work to do. He hasn’t done any work since we came here. Because of his lumbago. I want to see him.’

  Rafferty studied him warily. ‘All right, lad. Follow me.’

  Reaching the tent where Dampier lived, Rafferty signed to Caccia to wait and disappeared inside. A moment or two later, his head appeared, gesturing to Caccia to step inside after him.

  Dampier was sitting at a table, writing what looked like a report.

  ‘Well, Caccia,’ he said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  Caccia’s throat worked once or twice then he drew a deep breath and blurted out his request. ‘Sir, I want to get married.’

  Dampier had been listening with only half his attention, his eyes still on the report he was writing. His lumbago was nagging at him again and, in addition, he had a feeling that he was going to have a lot of explaining to do when he finally managed to return to the British lines and he had been giving a lot of thought to his words. He looked up sharply.

  ‘You want what?’ he said, wincing heavily as pain jabbed at him like an assegai.

  ‘I want to get married.’

  Dampier stared. ‘Good God, man,’ he snapped, ‘this is no time to be worrying about getting married! It can wait until we get back to our lines, can’t it?’

  ‘No, sir. It can’t wait.’

  ‘Dammit, there’s nothing we can do about it here, stuck out in the blue, with the girl back in England.’

  ‘She’s not back in England, sir.’

  ‘She’s not? Cairo? Who is it?’

  Caccia drew a deep breath. ‘Her name’s Rosalba Coccioli.’

  ‘She sounds Italian.’

  ‘She is Italian, sir.’

  Dampier frowned. ‘I think you might have difficulty over this, Caccia. The authorities would never wear it. They’re none too fond of the Italians just now. After all, they’re a pretty treacherous lot.’ Dampier coughed, realizing his gaffe as he remembered Caccia was almost more Italian than English. ‘Well, shall we say they don’t like Italian Italians. There are a lot of British Italians, of course. In London. I expect you’re one. Splendid chaps. Run excellent restaurants. Eaten there meself—’ He realized he was running on unnecessarily without improving the situation and changed direction hurriedly. ‘However, whatever the authorities think about the Italians, I can’t do anything about it here.’

  ‘I think you can, sir. You’ve got to.’

  Dampier’s eyes narrowed and his brows came down again. ‘What do you mean? I’ve got to.’

  In a mass of stumbling sentences, Caccia tried to explain. When he’d finished, Dampier looked at Rafferty, whose face was as blank as his own. Then, as it finally dawned on him what Caccia was trying to tell him, the balloon we
nt up.

  ‘You mean this girl’s here somewhere? Here? Good God, man, do you realize what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Caccia said wretchedly.

  ‘There’s a war on, man! We’re facing the whole bloody world armed with not much else but our teeth and fingernails and you go off chasing enemy females. What in God’s name have you been up to? Have you been seducing the girl?’

  Caccia looked miserable. He had begun to realize that Rosalba Coccioli was a very determined young woman. ‘I don’t know which way it was, sir,’ he admitted. ‘It seemed a bit as if she was seducing me.’

  ‘Good God! Dancers! Singers! Comedians! Deserters! Now seducers! What have we got mixed up with, Mr Rafferty?’ Dampier glared at Caccia. ‘Where is this girl?’

  ‘In Zuq, sir. She lives at the Bar Barbieri.’

  ‘And you’ve been sneaking in there? Into Zuq, at night? Without a pass?’

  ‘Sir, I didn’t know anybody was issuing passes.’

  Nobody was, so Dampier cleared his throat noisily. ‘You’ve been consorting with the enemy, Caccia. That’s a criminal offence, isn’t it, Mr Rafferty?’

  Rafferty, as usual, seemed to find it all highly amusing. ‘Sure, they usually shoot ’em, sir,’ he said.

  Caccia threw him an alarmed look and Dampier gestured angrily. It jabbed at his lumbago again and he finally lost his temper. ‘Put this bloody man under arrest, Mr Rafferty!’

  ‘Sir!’ Caccia’s voice rose to a bleat of protest. ‘I think you should listen!’

  ‘Good God! Desertion’s bad enough! Consorting with the enemy’s about the most severe crime you could commit!’

  ‘But, sir—!’

  ‘He’s confined to his tent, Mr Rafferty, until we decide what to do with him.’

  Rafferty walked with Caccia back to his tent. He was a calm man and he had a lot of experience. Instead of merely leaving Caccia to himself, he leaned on the tent pole.

  ‘You said the colonel should listen,’ he said. ‘Why? Have you something that might be an explanation?’

  ‘Not half I haven’t, sir,’ Caccia complained. ‘What I’ve got’s enough to make your hat spin round. I just didn’t get a chance to say so.’

  A few minutes later, Rafferty reappeared in Dampier’s tent.

  ‘I think, sir,’ he said, ‘that mebbe we should talk some more to Driver Caccia.’

  When Caccia reappeared in Dampier’s tent, the colonel was in a more subdued mood. Morton was also there this time, alongside Rafferty, almost in the guise of the prisoner’s friend at a court martial.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your case, Caccia,’ Dampier said. ‘And I’m assuming that your conduct is explained to a certain extent by the fact that you have Italian blood in you. But you’re still a British soldier. Can’t you just ignore her? Soldiers have done it before, y’know. Got a girl into trouble and then asked for a posting to the other end of the country.’ He was itching to know what was on the map Rafferty had told him about, but in his pompous way he felt he first had to go through the rigmarole of reading some sort of lecture. ‘Not that we can give you a posting from here. But we’ll be away soon. Corporal Morton has information that the Italians are about to start clearing a strip of the minefield.’

  Caccia drew another deep breath. ‘It’s not as simple as that, sir.’

  ‘Soldiers have always found it simple before. It’s something I very much deplore. Putting a girl in the family way – is she in the family way?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then, what the devil are you worrying about? You’ve heard of the Soldier’s Farewell, haven’t you? And shotgun weddings never work. Just forget her.’

  ‘I can’t, sir.’

  ‘Great gold teeth of God, man! Don’t start being all intense with us! Of course you can forget her!’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, sir. This time it concerns all of us. You, sir. Mr Rafferty, sir. All the others. She’s found out.’

  ‘What do you mean, she’s found out?’

  ‘About us.’

  Dampier glared. ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘No, sir. I swear. But she says if I don’t marry her, she’ll go to the town major and tell him who we are. We won’t half catch a cold.’

  ‘Good God!’ Dampier looked at Rafferty for guidance but the warrant officer’s face remained blank. ‘Can she?’

  ‘She knows where we are. She said she drove out in her uncle’s car a few days ago to watch. She had a pair of binoculars. British ones. Captured British ones. Stolen from the dump.’

  ‘Good God,’ Dampier said again. ‘Everybody’s at it.’ He paused. ‘Look, tell her to come out here to see me. It’s usual for the CO to see the girl. Then we can just hang on to her. Keep her prisoner until we’re ready to go – it’ll only be a day or two now – then we can let her go free.’

  ‘It won’t work, sir,’ Caccia explained. ‘If she didn’t return, a word from her uncle would bring the whole of the Luftwaffe down on us. She’s got us by the short and curlies. Besides’ – Caccia frowned – ‘she says I’ve got to turn up. Me. Complete with ring and the lot. She wants to be married. In Zuq. I think she wants her friends to know and I don’t think she trusts me. There is one thing—’

  Dampier glared at Caccia. ‘Ah! So there’s another angle, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Extenuating circumstances, you might say. She seems to have the battle order of the whole Italian army. Every division. Every regiment. Every battalion. And she knows exactly where they all are. She doesn’t want to hand us over, see, sir. She wants to help.’

  Dampier chewed at his lip for a second before looking up again. ‘How do we know she’s not a German agent?’

  In reply, Caccia fished in his pocket and handed over a map. It had come from the kitchen of the Bar Barbieri and it had been cut in half. But it was marked with Italian and German regiments, brigades and divisions and the assembly areas for tanks. Dampier’s eyes widened.

  ‘Good God,’ he said as the others crowded forward to look. ‘She’s got the lot! Hand me my map, Mr Rafferty, please.’

  They placed the two maps side by side. The positions they had discovered with the help of Clutterbuck, Morton, Scarlatti and the chatter of people like Mondi were all there on Rosalba’s map – and there were a great many more besides.

  ‘It seems genuine.’ Dampier looked at Caccia. ‘And the girl – this girl of yours – she’s got the other half?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Dampier was interested. ‘Well, at least, my lad, I’d say you’ve found yourself a very resourceful and determined young woman.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Caccia admitted ruefully. ‘I think I have.’

  ‘Is she attractive?’

  ‘Very beautiful, sir.’

  Rafferty was studying the map again. ‘Where did she pick up all this information?’ he asked.

  Caccia explained. ‘She said it was dead easy,’ he ended. ‘Some of it came from the girls in the brothels.’

  Dampier’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is she one?’

  ‘Blimey, no, sir!’ Caccia looked alarmed. He had a very formidable mother and could guess what she would have said. ‘Not her! But there aren’t all that many Italian girls left in Zuq, so she knows them all. The Italian soldiers like to talk. They like to show off. I’m Italian, sir, so I know. She says when the attack comes there’s to be no barrage. No warning. The tanks are going through with aircraft overhead to drown their engines and there are going to be trucks fitted with aero engines and propellers to the south to stir up clouds of dust so it’ll look like a panzer attack from that end. They’re going to give our lot a doing. It’s going to be a right old ding-dong. It’s to be a surprise.’

  ‘It will be too,’ Rafferty observed. ‘To the Italians. If we get this information to the right quarters.’

  ‘When’s it all to take place?’ Dampier asked.

  ‘She says Thursday.’

  ‘That’s what I heard,’ Morton said. ‘So that’s correct.’r />
  ‘She got the regimental numbers because her uncle goes into the stores dump to buy army rations. It’s all illegal but it goes on—’

  ‘So I’ve noticed,’ Dampier said coldly.

  ‘There’s an Italian sergeant who sells him petrol on the side and he gets to see the indents, the amounts, and where it’s going, and he can tell from the quantities roughly how many vehicles there are.’

  Dampier was growing interested and he leaned forward. ‘They seem very anxious to assist us.’

  ‘She’s very pro-British, sir.’ Caccia’s keen awareness of when a green light was showing told him that Dampier was coming round a little. ‘It was very dangerous, sir. But they’re on our side. Her father was arrested by Mussolini and died in chokey. They want to help.’ He stopped and drew a deep breath. ‘But,’ he ended, ‘they also want me.’

  ‘Do you want her?’

  Caccia considered. Despite the trap he had fallen into, it occurred to him that in Rosalba there was a great deal that was in his mother, who had not only brought up a family of four but had also managed to run the family business when his father had been out enjoying himself. She could well be a treasure.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said firmly. ‘I do.’

  Dampier frowned. ‘But what would you do with her afterwards? When we head back? You’d have to leave her behind.’

  ‘She wants to come with us, sir. She says if she can get to Cairo she can get herself sent to England.’

  ‘What in God’s name would she do in England?’

  ‘She’d be all right, sir. Her cousin’s married to a pal of mine.’

  Dampier was beginning to see the point at last. ‘I think we’re going to have to take her with us, Mr Rafferty,’ he said slowly. ‘If only for her own safety because, if it got out that she’d supplied us with information, they’d probably shoot her, imprison her at the very least.’ He looked baffled. ‘But what do we do about the wedding?’

  Morton interrupted. ‘There are military priests in Zuq,’ he said. ‘Scarlatti would find one. He might even consider a marriage in his diocese romantic. I can arrange everything and attend the wedding service.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Good officer type, concerned with the welfare of his men. I’m sure you’d approve, sir.’