There's No Home

by Alexander Baron

  ‘Brave talk!’ cried Graziella. ‘What would you do when the carabinieri came?’

  ‘Men!’ Paloma shouted. ‘When a man is alone in the house with his wife he is brave. But face a thousand men with a thousand wives and see what happens then! We would change a few things, I can tell you!’ She came out from behind the curtain. ‘Men! Look at them! There is only one thing we need from them, and they never even have enough of that. Wake up, you!’ She prodded Honeycombe with her foot. ‘I have not finished feeding you yet, baby.’

  The women brought out fruit, nuts, torrone and more wine. ‘It is time for some more dancing,’ Paloma said. ‘Come.’

  ‘Go away,’ mumbled Craddock. ‘Let a man rest.’

  They drank wine, and the men lolled in their chairs struggling against sleep while the women ate and talked. At last, Paloma stretched herself and uttered a long, satisfied grunt. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there are two things that make life beautiful, and I have just had one of them.’ She shook Honeycombe. ‘Have I ever shown you my wedding photographs, corporal? I am sure you would like to see them.’

  Honeycombe made a face of resignation and rose to his feet. ‘The end of a perfect day,’ he said to Craddock.

  Paloma followed him out of the house. She turned in the doorway and chucked, ‘Kurroo, kurroo. Sleep well, my little turtle doves.’

  §§§§

  ‘That was a good evening,’ said Graziella when they were alone. ‘Are you pleased with me?’

  ‘Now,’ Craddock came and sat on the bed beside her. ‘Where did you get the money?’

  ‘Are you not pleased? I was so proud. I thought you would be happy to entertain your friend as if in your own home.’

  ‘I have asked you a question.’

  She lay back on the bed and stretched her body. ‘Stay the night, dear. You have never stayed the whole night. As long as you go away after an hour, we are still strangers.’

  ‘Tell me where you got the money.’

  ‘I had no money.’

  ‘Where did the food come from?’

  ‘Now, after this beautiful evening, you start a quarrel. Why? Paloma brought some of it. She wanted to help.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  Graziella was silent.

  ‘And the rest?’

  Graziella cried, ‘Look at my feet!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Go on, look at my feet!’ She drew her legs up and placed them across his lap. He looked at her feet. The soles were covered with cuts and blisters.

  ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘For you. I did that for you, to please you.’ Her voice was unsteady. ‘I had no money. I walked to the farm where my uncle lives. It is near Misterbianco. It is fifteen kilometres there and back. The road is steep and stony, and the heat was great. I told him I wanted food, and he gave me meat, and eggs, and cheese, and fruit. He put it in a big bag and I carried the bag all the way here on my back. I had to start very early, and I did not arrive home until an hour before you came.’ She looked at him expectantly, through tears.

  Craddock looked away, frowning. ‘Aren’t you tired? he said at last.

  ‘What does it matter?’ she cried.

  He sighed, and looked down at her in perplexity. ‘You must never do this again.’

  ‘Why not?’ she said defiantly. ‘For you I would do it every day.’

  Craddock said, with an edge of anger in his voice, ‘I am serious. You must listen to me, or it will be finished between us.’

  She stared at him. Her face was taut with incredulity; muscles quivered beneath the skin, and her full cheeks went slack and ugly with grief. There was an empty second, then a sudden vomit of sobbing burst up from deep inside her. She wailed, in a cracked voice that forced itself through the thickness in her throat, ‘I wanted to please you!’ She rolled away from him, sobbing in great spasms that seized her whole body.

  Craddock felt helpless, at once weary and contrite. ‘Don’t cry!’ he muttered awkwardly. He reached out and put his hand on her quivering shoulder. ‘It is only that you do too much for me.’

  The sobbing subsided. She sat up, with a bubbling sniff and wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. ‘You are not truly angry?’

  He stroked her feet gently with his fingertips. ‘Poor Graziella! Your poor feet!’ He reached out and brushed her hair back from her forehead. ‘Do you really want me to stay with you all night?’

  She took his hand before he could withdraw it, and held it tight. ‘He says I do too much for him,’ she said dreamily. ‘Oh, the stupid man! Too much!’ – and she began to laugh.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A FAT colonel stopped Captain Rumbold in the street. Rumbold was hardly aware at first that someone was calling him. The streets which had confronted him like a maze of white buildings on the morning, exactly three weeks ago, when he had marched in, were now as familiar to him as if he had lived here for years; and his legs took him wherever he wished to go without making any demands on his mind, which at this moment was occupied with planning the day’s training.

  ‘Here, you!’

  Rumbold paused. ‘Are you talking to me?’

  The colonel’s red cheeks were inflated with anger, and his little eyes glittered. ‘Yes, you! You’re an officer, aren’t you?’

  Rumbold touched the captain’s insignia on his shoulder straps. ‘Can’t you see these?’ The colonel only stood chest-high to him. ‘I’ll bend over.’

  The colonel’s flush darkened. ‘Blasted insolence! Don’t you know how to speak to a superior officer? What do you mean by gadding about the streets dressed up like that?’

  Rumbold was wearing brown corduroy trousers, a blue shirt that he had taken from an Italian officer and a yellow silk sweat-rag. He was going to take the men on an exercise among some ruined houses, and there was no sense in dressing uncomfortably or in spoiling a clean uniform. ‘You’re behind the times,’ he said agreeably. ‘It’s what the well-dressed man is wearing this season. Didn’t you know?’

  The colonel’s cheeks quivered with rage. ‘I’ve a good mind to have you arrested. What’s your unit?’

  ‘Tenth Kents. What’s yours?’ Rumbold studied ostentatiously the supply service badge in the colonel’s cap. ‘Lord’s Day Observance Society?’

  The colonel fumbled in his pocket and produced a notebook. ‘You’ll be hearing more of this. Your name?’

  ‘Goldberg. You can call me Basil.’

  ‘Tenth Kents,’ repeated the colonel as he wrote in his notebook. He glared up at Rumbold. ‘You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face in a day or two. I shall insist that you’re made an example of. I shall report this personally to your commanding officer.’

  Rumbold brought his heels together and jerked his arm up in a monstrously correct salute. ‘You’ll really have to excuse me now,’ he said politely. ‘It’s been so nice!’

  He marched away like a Guardsman; but, when he had turned the corner and relaxed into his normal pace, he felt less cheerful. He was not worried about the consequences of this encounter. It was the new atmosphere which it betokened in the town that made him uncomfortable. A couple of weeks ago the town had been just behind the fighting line. Now it was – he hated the words, they made him ashamed of his presence here – the Base. A couple of weeks ago there had been nothing but comradeship, a sense of recognition, among the men who swarmed in the streets. There had still been the sound of artillery in the distance, mingling with their cheerful hubbub, to unite them; a salute had been a greeting freely offered. Now the men walked about in the streets with a grudging constraint. The lorry convoys were on the move again, more and more offices, depots, hospitals, were springing up, in readiness for the next phase of operations. A horde of administrators had moved in to wind up the machine again while the soldiers waited uneasily. Provosts, staff officers, middle-aged martinets of every kind, continuing on their plush-lined odyssey from Cairo and Algiers, lurked everywhere, issued regulations,
dispensed punishments and reprimands, the masters of this new order. Rumbold believed in discipline. He exacted it from his own men and he did not grudge it among his fellow-officers of the fighting army. But it irked him to see these newcomers putting up ‘OFFICERS ONLY’ signs outside every good restaurant, over the front seats in the theatres, even in the windows of the best of the barbers’ shops. This was not his idea of discipline.

  ‘By God!’ he said to Perkington when he arrived at the billet. ‘It’s time we were getting out of here!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Perkington, ‘I feel rather creepy waiting about here and wondering what’s going to happen next.’

  ‘Oh, Lord! You don’t want to start mooning about that. Time enough when the muck starts flying past your ears. Eh, Porky?’

  Piggott looked up from his typewriter. ‘You! You don’t know when you’re on to a good thing. I’d sooner put up with a few brass hats, any day, than have those bastard eighty-eights plonking down all round.’

  ‘You’re getting soft in your old age, Porky. You’d better not get too comfortable. Something tells me it won’t be long now.’

  ‘I know,’ groaned Piggott. ‘I’ve got eyes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come to the party last night?’ the captain asked Perkington.

  Perkington blushed. ‘Oh, I had some reading to do.’

  ‘You ought to come out of your shell a bit, Perks,’ the captain said. ‘Then you won’t have so much time to worry about how you’ll make out.’ He smiled. ‘No need to be shy, you know. There’s another binge tonight. Why don’t you come?’

  ‘Oh.’ Gratitude flickered in Perkington’s eyes. ‘Thanks, I’d like to.’

  ‘I’ll show you my countess. First time I’ve ever copulated with the aristocracy. Now I know what they mean by a democratic war.’

  ‘Hi-aye,’ said Piggott, ‘off with the old and on with the new!’

  ‘She’s what Porky here would call a peach. Tall, slender, honey blonde hair, golden skin. She thinks the Germans were horrid, but some of their parachute officers were rather nice. She thinks I’m nice, too. There she was on one side of the room, and there was I on the other. About two hundred people in between. She takes a look round and comes sailing across to me with a cocktail. A little bit of backchat, and the whole thing’s in the bag. I will say this for the nobility, they’re as smooth as silk. What a woman,’ he said reminiscently. ‘She could pinch a beggar’s last crust and he’d feel flattered. You know, she introduced me to her husband, a poor little man like a monkey perched all alone on a settee. There he was, in a beautiful grey suit, he looked up at me with big, mournful eyes. He knew what I was there for, all right. And all the time she stood on the other side of him, looking at me over his head. He spoke perfect English, in a sad, polite kind of voice, inviting me to come and stay with them in their villa at Taormina, and all the time she was giving me the old eye. It was obvious why she’d showed him to me. It was her way of telling me the coast was clear. And, by God, it was, too! I stayed there till this morning and I never got another glimpse of him.’

  Piggott asked, ‘What about Little Nell?’

  ‘Oh, her! Have a heart, there’s a limit to what a man can do. It’s time for her to run along and play.’

  ‘You’re a baby-snatching old bastard, aren’t you?’ said Piggott. ‘Did he tell you,’ he asked Perkington, ‘she’s only fifteen?’

  ‘Away with you,’ said the captain. ‘She loves it, the little bitch. They’re all the same here. Early ripe, early fade. They’re a randy lot.’

  Piggott asked, ‘Did that Nella cost you much?’

  ‘Not a penny. All she wanted was my own sweet self. Quiet, like a little girl with a doll. Queer kid. I suppose I ought to give her a present, or something. What d’you reckon? Five thousand do?’

  Perkington said, ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  Piggott exclaimed, ‘Save your money, you silly old sod.’

  Perkington was looking at Piggott in surprise. ‘It’s all right,’ said the captain. ‘He’s a privileged person. He’s my privy counsellor. What do you recommend, Porky?’

  ‘You can get the pick of the bunch for fifty lire. Give her five hundred and tell her she’s lucky to get it.’

  ‘That’s your job,’ said Rumbold. ‘Here’s two thousand. You can give her my love and tell her to go and blow bubbles.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Why not, I’m doing you a favour. You can try your own luck while you’re about it. It’s vacant possession. Girls like that don’t stay long to let. Now beat it, I’m busy.’ He turned to Perkington.

  ‘Don’t try so hard not to look shocked, old son. You’ve got a face like a slab of frozen cod. We’ve got a busy day in front of us. We’re going to give the troops a taste of rough stuff for a change. They won’t like it, but it’ll get their blood up. I know my men. You watch ’em!’

  The two officers busied themselves with their plans.

  §§§§

  Wally Fooks counted the roll of notes, stowed it safely in his pocket and sauntered out of the café into the sunlit confusion of the Piazza Stesicoro.

  A handsome woman, with the bleached hair and short skirts of a prostitute, crossed his path, and his bowels leaped. The sunshine struck through her light frock to reveal the whiteness and the sumptuous outlines of her body. She walked with a sway that maddened him, towards the narrow, forbidden streets at whose corners the military policemen paced. She looked back at him and mocked him with a smile, and he turned to follow her.

  Today’s training among the ruins, with the thunder of grenades echoing among the broken walls, had awakened a dismal thought in him. In its first four weeks in action the company had lost nearly half its strength through death, wounds or malaria. How many of the men would be alive in four weeks’ time? Or four weeks after that? He had dismissed the thought, for no soldier likes to let his imagination roam backwards or forwards in time or to dwell on what is happening to his companions; but it had, working in the obscure depths of his consciousness, awakened Private Fooks to the futility of laying up earthly possessions. He was an audacious and industrious pilferer. It was a habit that many of the men had brought with them from civilian life, where their employers were their natural enemies. Even Sergeant Craddock would risk his rank, when on a visit to the technical stores, by winding fifty yards of copper wire round his waist and smuggling it out to sell for a few hundred lire. Most of the men stole rations or stores to sell or to give to their sweethearts. Wally Fooks was more ambitious. He had received his training on London Docks, in a daily battle of wits with the port police. He already had stowed in his kit thirty watches, packed in grease in flat tobacco tins. Today he had enriched himself to the extent of three thousand lire, by the sale of a German pistol, a pair of boots and six typewriter ribbons and suddenly, at the sight of woman’s flesh, he was overcome by the urge to enjoy while he might all the good things of life.

  The woman walked past the redcaps, turned and looked back at him in inquiry. He made a furtive sign to her to wait. He looked around him. In the middle of the square was a rank of horse-drawn carriages. He went over to one, climbed into it, and explained to the driver, with much gesticulation and pidgin Italian, what he wanted to do. The cabby drew off the great black overcoat which he wore against the sun. Wally curled himself up on the floor, beneath the hood, and the cabby flung the coat over him. The cab swayed and jolted over the cobbles while Fooks huddled, sweating, in suffocating darkness. The smell was acrid and overpowering, and he felt the fiery bites of fleas on his skin. He slid to one side as the cab lurched round a corner; then he was free again, in the blinding daylight.

  The woman was not in sight. He walked down the narrow street in search of her, avoiding the refuse that stank in the gutters. She must be somewhere ahead; or perhaps she was waiting for him in a doorway. She was nowhere to be seen. Other women beckoned to him, but they were drab and slack-bodied. The insolence of the woman he had followed burned inside him; he wanted what her flimsy
frock had hidden, and he hunted for her.

  He searched in streets, alleys and dank courtyards, until black patches of sweat stained his collar and the armpits of his khaki shirt. He turned into a street of silent, shuttered houses. No women stood in the doorways, no children screamed in the gutters. The clamour of the town came faintly to him as if through blankets. He heard his own footsteps, loud on the cobbles; and footsteps behind him. He turned and saw a Sicilian following him, loping along on short, thin legs to keep up with his own long stride. The Sicilian hesitated as Fooks confronted him, then came on. The man wore a creased and dirty suit of white duck and a Panama hat; his haggard face twisted itself, around his beak of a nose, into an ingratiating smile, but his eyes, feverish and intent, followed every movement that Fooks made.

  ‘Tommy want signorina?’

  Fooks relaxed; he had been on guard; soldiers had been knifed in these streets. ‘Looking for a blondie. Big here. White dress. Capeesh? Know her?’

  ‘Sure,’ – the man had an organ-grinder-American accent – ‘I get you a fine blondie. Blondie, red hair, dark hair, French girl, Polish girl, any damn thing you want. I guess you like a drink, too, eh, Tommy? You come along with me. I show you a swell house.’

  Fooks grinned. ‘House no bonna. I’m looking for someone. Beat it!’ He turned and walked on.

  The Sicilian scurried after him. He plucked at the sleeve of Fooks’s shirt. ‘Aw, come on, fella. You wanna good time. I show you everything.’

  Fooks shook the man off and struck threateningly at him with the back of his hand. ‘Ah-way, you shower! I don’t want no pimp pawin’ at me!’ The man continued to trot after him. Fooks halted, at the street corner. ‘Listen, useless, how d’you get out of here?’

  ‘Sure, you come with me, I show you. Ala-ways glad to help Tommy.’ He led Fooks down an alley and indicated an archway. ‘T’rough here, you come-a quick to waterfront.’ Fooks followed, and found himself in a dark, paved courtyard. He could see no other exit. ‘Here!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s the idea?’