Dead and Alive

CHAPTER FIVE

The weather was fair and we made a steady eight knots. Dugan and Boyd split the engine-room duties and Stuart and I the watches and wheel duty. The Bay was placid and by the morning of the third day we were running down the coast of Portugal. It began to get hot.

That night there occurred something that had a bearing on what happened later. Darkness came out of a cloudless sky. Stuart and I were on the bridge, smoking and watching the stars. The sea was almost glassy and only a slight vibration and the sound of the engines told us that we were moving. The night air was warm with the promise of heat from the desert sands of Africa.

‘We should pick up the light of Cape Vincent soon,’ I said. I switched the light on in the covered chart recess and checked our position. According to my reckoning we were due to change course in another half-hour from south to south-east to make the Straits.

‘There’s a ship dead ahead of us,’ Stuart said.

I took my head out of the recess and gazed into the starlit night. At first I could see nothing. But as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness after the glare of the chart table light, I made out the dim shape of a small ship.

‘Looks like a schooner,’ Stuart added, passing the glasses across to me. ‘She’s no sails and she’s without lights.’

I took the glasses. It was a schooner all right, of the type that do much of the coastal trade round Spain and Italy. As I watched her a froth of white appeared at her stern. She had got her auxiliary going. Sails fluttered up clothing her bare masts and drawing fitfully in the light breeze. She began to move across our bows as we bore down on her.

I edged the wheel up and the bows came round until we were heading straight for her again. ‘I am closing her to see why she is without lights,’ I told Stuart.

He nodded, but made no comment. He was tapping his teeth with his pipe and gazing for’ard at the rapidly looming shape.

When we were about a cable’s-length away the schooner suddenly stopped her engines. Her sails dropped limply from her masts leaving them bare as they had been before. ‘Stop both,’ I ordered the engine-room. In the sudden quiet the sound of the water creaming before the thrusting bows was very loud. I switched on the loud-hailer. ‘Ahoy, there!’ I called. ‘What ship is that?’

Back come the reply in Spanish. The voice was the voice of a man who was very excited.

‘Perche non avete luce?” I asked, trying him in simple Italian.

There was no reply.

We were close alongside now and I switched on the bridge spotlight. The deck of the schooner was littered with wine barrels below the fallen sails. The captain, short, dark-haired and thin-faced, stood at the rail watching us intently. ‘Che e vostra — what’s the word for cargo?’ Stuart asked me.

‘Cos portate nella barca?’ I called out.

There followed a stream of Spanish which was quite unintelligible. It ended with the words, ”Vino, caballero, solo vino.” ‘Perche non avete la luce?’ I demanded again.

Another flood of Spanish from which I gathered his dynamo had broken down. But there was a gleam of electric light from the companionway.

‘Better push on, David,’ Stuart said. ‘He’s up to no good. I’ll bet it’s not wine in those barrels. But it’s none of our business and even if it were we couldn’t do anything about it.’

‘Okay,’ I said. I put the microphone of the loud-hailer to my mouth. ‘Accendete luce,’ I said menacingly, and then to the engine-room, ‘Slow ahead both.’

As we gathered way the sea creamed at his stern and the little schooner made off in the opposite direction. Obviously he thought we were a naval ship.

‘What do you reckon he was up to?’ I asked Stuart. ‘He was lying about his electric light being out of order. Anyway, he had oil storm lamps which he could have lit.’

Stuart shrugged his shoulders. ‘Contraband,’ he said. ‘Possibly arms. There must be a lot of that going on round the Mediterranean. Think of the vast quantities of arms and equipment we lost in North Africa and Italy. Incidentally,’ he added. ‘I didn’t tell you, but we had an offer to go into the arms running racket ourselves.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘It was whilst I was up in London that first time — about the fourth day I was there. A little man came to see me in the evening. He had a bald shiny head and square features. He looked what I have no doubt he had been — a Fascist profiteer. His opening gambit was: Would we be interested in a profitable cargo? I said, yes, but it depended on the cargo. He talked for a long time then about the advantages of the type of ship we had. ‘You don’t need to worry about ports,’ he said. ‘A firm beach, your door down and your cargo, if loaded on lorries, is away.’

‘I said the matter had not escaped our notice, and his belly shook with silent laughter. I asked him what he was suggesting. He looked at me out of his little pig eyes as though calculating the best line of approach. Then he said, ‘You realize, Mr McCrae, that there is a lot of unrest in Italy — under the surface. The unruly elements of the population are intent upon destroying the new Italy that is arising from the ashes of the old. A responsible section of the people, however, are determined that this shall not happen. But the mob is armed with weapons taken from the battlefields of your Italian campaign. Fortunately for Italy we still have our men of vision. They realize that it is necessary to have arms. The responsible section of the people cannot save the country without arms. You will be doing a great service to Italy and to your own country if you place your ship at our disposal.’

‘ “You say these arms will be profitable as a cargo?” I said. “Who will pay?”

‘He explained hastily that there was not the slightest cause for alarm. Apparently some of the men with vision had also had the forethought to make plenty of money.

‘It was then that I told him what I thought of him. I picked the protesting little bastard up by his collar and hit him. I kept on hitting him, explaining to him about the war we’d fought in Italy and the blood we’d spilt because of Fascism. I was really mad. And then I threw him down the stairs. My landlady was most upset and I had to explain that the man was drunk.’

‘What was his name?’ I asked Stuart.

‘That was what was so annoying,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t remember it afterwards. I went for a walk along the Embankment. I tried to remember it then. But I couldn’t. Anyway, it was almost certain to be false. I gave his description to Scotland Yard and they promised to notify the Italian Government of what had occurred.’

I thought about what Stuart had told me a lot that night as the ship slid across the dark unruffled waters beneath the stars. I was trying to adjust myself to the idea of an Italy controlled by the Italians. When I had last been in Naples, Civitavecchia, Piambino and Livorno, there had always been units of the British Navy, British and American M.P.s — the streets had been crowded with Allied troops. Now, of course, all that would be changed. The troops would have gone either to the Far East or back to Civvy Street or been absorbed by the armies of occupation in Germany.

I had been in Rome at the opening of the trial of Caruso, the police chief who had handed over the political prisoners to the Germans to be shot in the Ardeatine caves. I had seen the mob surge forward in the courtroom and tear Carreta, once governor of the Regina Coeli prison and chief witness for the prosecution, from the hands of the Carabinieri, had seen him beaten unconscious, thrown from the Ponte Umberto into the Tiber and beaten to death by oars. And I was suddenly glad of the weapons that Dugan had found in that locker.

Next morning we were in the Gibraltar Straits and the steel of the deck was burning hot to the touch. There followed four days of blazing sun and calm sea before we raised the heat-hazed outline of the southern tip of Sardinia. Then a breeze sprang up and held until two days later we sighted the sugar loaf bulk of Vesuvius crouched behind the Bay of Naples.

Boyd was on the bridge with me as we entered the Bay. The sky and sea were very blue. Bermuda rigged yachts heeled their white sails over against the backcloth of the city that climbed from the waterfront to the heights on which the Castello San Elmo stood. He pointed to the great sprawling bulk of Vesuvius. ‘Ever been up to have a look at the crater, Mr Cunningham?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘When I arrived in Naples for the first time the volcano had already been in eruption and it was impossible to go up.’

He nodded. ‘I had two months in Naples,’ he said. ‘I was driving for a dock company. We went up Vesuvius one Sunday from the toll road above ‘For re Annunziata. Cor! What a place! I ain’t ever seen anything like it in all my life — an’ I bin ara’nd a bit. Get Dante and Michael Angelo to team up on a kid’s idea of Hell an’ it’d be a bleedin’ paradise compared with wot Vesuvius was. The sides was like a giant’s castle and when you’d got up them you was on a plateau of black rock like metal, all smoking, and in the middle of it was a great slag heap like a devil’s dunghill. Every thirty seconds or so there’d be a noise like a thousand tons of bombs dropped on your feet, and the whole earth would quiver. I went up to the top of the slag. It was hot and every time the mountain blew off it quivered like a ruddy jelly. Through gaps in the smoke I could see great red gobs of molten rock leaping out of the flames, and solidified rocks spattered the other side of the crater. I reckon she must have been throwing ‘em up to near on a thousand feet. But the funnel of the crater sloped away from us otherwise we’d have ‘ad it.’

‘Were you there when the eruption occurred?’ I asked.

‘Was I there? Cor, stone the crows! There — I was evacuating the women and kids from one end of Monte di Somma whilst the lava stream was swallowing it up from the other. I won’t ever forget that Tuesday. There was a hell of a hailstorm at about four in the afternoon — six inches of hail in ten minutes. And half-an-hour later there was a noise like ten thousand expresses going through a tunnel and a great column of black vapour steamed up to about twenty thousand feet. It was full of ash, that vapour. It rose like a — huge great rolling cauliflower of muck.

‘It wasn’t so bad when the eruption was just a great mass of black clinkers that glowed red at night — except for the blokes whose homes were in the way of it — but when the crater started blowing off in real earnest, then I began thinking of what had happened to Pompeii.

‘After that the Sangro River seemed quite tame, though I got wounded there and was downgraded. That’s when I was drafted to the Water Company.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Two months in Naples taught me a fing or two aba’t huming-nature. Gor blimy, wot a place. I seen men die in the streets for lack of food. The Ityes didn’t worry. The girls’d sell themselves for a tin of bully and there was gangs of ‘ooligans on the loot. The only people wot was well fed was the boys in the Black Market. They did all right. A lot of the dock boys were in the racket one way and another. They say about a quarter of a million pounds of stuff was disappearing from the docks each month. An’ I wouldn’t doubt it cos I seen drivers wiv my own eyes bring out a roll of thousand lire notes — and army pay didn’t allow you saving that much, the price of vino being wot it was. An’ I bet it ain’t changed much.’

And he was right there. Naples was the same bomb-raddled mean-streeted tart that I had known over a year ago. We berthed at the mole which the navy had used. There was little sign of any reconstruction work. They were still using the improvised quays that we had built over sunken ships at the time of Anzio. They had cleared a few more of the shattered buildings and some wooden sheds had been erected for storage. But the port area looked just what it was — a place that had been blasted to hell from the air.

It had an air of tired lethargy about it. But then, of course, the last time I had seen it the Navy had been in charge, and despite the destruction of so much of its wharfage it had been handling a bigger volume of traffic than ever before in its history.

It was just after midday when Stuart and I went ashore. After arranging for the refuelling and watering of the ship we walked to the Banco di Napoli in the Via Roma and opened an account there. Then we went to the Zita Teresa for lunch. The long glass windows were open to the little harbour of Santa Lucia under the looming bulk of the Castello dell’Ovo. They were unloading wine casks from Ischia and the sour smell of vino was mingled with the smell of dead fish and tar. The Capri ferry was in and there was an old M.A.S. boat aground under the castle walls. They were playing O SoleMio as we entered, and the man with the fiddle was the one who had played to Allied troops before the restaurant had been turned into a Men’s Naafi. We had frutti di mare, ravioli, lobster salad and zabaione with Lacrima Cristi. And the price was staggeringly cheap in comparison with what we used to pay.

After lunch we returned to the Via Roma. The firm to whom we were delivering our cargo had their offices in the Galleria Umberto. A girl with raven black hair and large breasts barely concealed by a low cut frock showed us into Signor Guidici’s office. ‘Good-afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have been expecting you.’ He was small and fat and he was smoking a cigar. He waved us to two chromium-plated chairs with a white podgy hand. The room was expensively and uncomfortably furnished in the ultra-modern style — all steel and glass.

But he spoke English well and dealt with the matter of our cargo with dispatch. It was to be landed at Possuoli the following day. He had arranged registration of the vehicles and would supply drivers. When he heard that we were also carrying a cargo of five hundred thousand cigarettes he offered to buy them straight away and the price he named was good. Moreover he gave us his cheque for the full amount there and then and agreed to our terms that one truck should be retained by us until we had loaded our return cargo.

We agreed to run a similar cargo for him as soon as we had obtained the cargo we wanted for the return run. As he was showing us out he said, ‘There is a friend of mine who is wishing to meet you. He is hoping you will come to a little party he gives at his home tomorrow night.’ He went back to his desk and scribbled down the address for us. ‘There,’ he said. ‘It is the Villa Rosa in Posillipo. Ask for the Villa Emma — that is where Lady Hamilton entertained your Lord Nelson. The Villa Rosa is just close. There will be good wine and nice girls who speak English a little. And I think he wishes to talk about business to you.’

We went out into the hot glare of the Galleria feeling pretty much on top of the world. In the space of a quarter of an hour we had settled the problem of the disposal of our cargo, had collected a cheque for nearly fourteen million lire, got an order for another cargo of a similar type, an invitation to a party and had made a new contact who wanted to do business with us. ‘I think this calls for a drink,’ Stuart said, echoing my own thoughts.

‘First let’s bank the cheque,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘You’re more Scots than I am, I do believe, David.’

We banked the cheque and then returned to the Galleria and sat in the shade of a coloured umbrella and watched the world go by, drinking cognac and lemon and discussing how best to acquire the cargo of wines and liqueurs that we needed.

A young student asked permission to sit at our table. He was thin, with slender hands, and sallow features below his dark oily hair. He spoke schoolroom English. We bought him a drink and questioned him about Italy. He told us things were very bad. The country was short of food and essential raw materials. ‘The men who control the country when Mussolini were Il Duce are still the masters,’ he said. ‘Many men have make much money in Black Market. They are very strong. And the people are very poor. There is not sufficient to eat and for many peoples there is no work. My father, he is a schoolteacher, and my brother, too. I am at the university. I study engineering.’ He gave a shrug of his shoulders and turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘But when I have done my examination I do not think there will be anything for me to do. There will be trouble in Italy soon,’ he added. ‘This is why Italy accepted Mussolini. We need a leader now.’

He was an intelligent youth and Stuart suggested taking him along with us. He would be useful as a guide, could act as our interpreter and might know something about prices. ‘In the mornings I am study always at the university,’ he said. ‘But afterwards, Signori, I am free.’

By the evening we had visited three or four wine dealers and had an idea at any rate of how to set about obtaining the cargo we wanted. We had also visited the Post Office and collected a cable from Fosdyk, setting out his requirements. It concluded with the words — ‘Prospects very good.’ On the strength of that we decided to celebrate. We took Pietro along and he showed us the cafes and wine bars of the narrow streets below the Corso Vittorio Emanuele where the women are like the women of any big port and where men try to forget that their children are half-starving and there is no future.

I was not feeling particularly happy when we returned to the ship. The misery of the people, mingling with the fumes of the bad liquor I’d drunk, had left me depressed. Stuart morosely staggered off to bed. I made myself some tea and then, because I needed to remind myself of the fresh clean air of England, I opened my tin box and took out Jenny’s jewel case. When I lifted the lid I found myself gazing at the faded photograph of a girl with pigtails and an oval face which had a suggestion of laughter in the eyes and mouth. Monique! I had forgotten all about her and my promise to her mother. And a sudden horror seized me at all the things I’d seen that night and all the dingy hovels I had been into. Perhaps in one of those frightful little drinking dens … I stood the photograph on the shelf above my bed. I must find that girl — find out what had happened to her. And with this resolution I lay down on my bunk and went to sleep.

I dreamed I was being chased through horrible twisting streets. Then I was being beaten by a black-shirted hooligan because I wouldn’t tell them where Monique was, and I woke to find the sun streaming in and Boyd shaking my shoulder. ‘Like a nice cup o’ char, sir?’ he asked.

I took it from him. ‘God! I feel lousy,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t wonder, sir. You weren’t yourself at all when you came aboard last night.’

‘I don’t even remember coming on board,’ I said. I noticed with disgust that I was fully clothed.

‘There’s a young Itye outside, sir. Says ‘e was wiv you last night an’ you told him to come and see you in the morning. He don’t look so good either.’ And he grinned.

‘Oh, Pietro,’ I said, and sat up on the bunk. My head felt terrible. ‘How’s Mr McCrae?’

‘Swearing something awful, sir.’

I got to my feet and found myself looking at Monique’s photograph propped up on the shelf above my bunk. ‘Send Pietro in,’ I told Boyd.

The boy certainly looked about as bad as I felt. He was very white and smiled sheepishly. ‘Next time we go out I take you to the good restaurant,’ he said.

‘You’re not taking me out again,’ I told him. Then I gave him Monique’s photograph and Mrs Galliani’s address. ‘Find that girl for me,’ I said. ‘And meet me at the same table in the Galleria at three o’clock, the day after tomorrow. And don’t lose the photograph,’ I added as he was leaving.

It took me all day to unload our cargo by the twisted wreckage of the ironworks that the Germans had destroyed two years before. The burnt-brown hills that encircle Pozzuoli shimmered in the heat and the peak of Mt. Epomeo on the island of Ischia was barely visible in the flaming heat haze. We got the loaded trucks off easily enough, but when they returned from delivering the cigarettes to a warehouse in Naples, we had to reload them with the spares.

We only got back to our berths in Naples just in time to change and take a taxi out to Posillipo. Stuart, who had been morosely silent all day, did not speak during the run out to the northern tip of the bay. But as the driver swung in through a crest-encrusted gateway, he suddenly said, ‘If the set-up here is phoney, we have nothing to do with it — agreed?’

I agreed.

That it was phoney, in his sense of the word, was apparent the moment we entered the villa. The building itself was old and it had been added to and parts of it rebuilt at various times. It stood on rock and on the Naples side of it was the old Palazzo Don Anna with its archways planted firmly in the sea. The old mellow exterior of the villa was wiped from my mind as soon as we got inside by the welter of gilt and cupid-covered murals. The floors were thickly carpeted and exotic flowers were banked up against the walls, giving the place a strange hot-house smell.

Guidici came forward to meet us and introduced us to our host, a tall, rather saturnine man with extravagant gestures and black hair, sleekly oiled. As I shook his hand I found myself looking into a pair of shrewd black eyes set close together in a lined and rather leathery face. He was somewhere between forty and fifty years old and clearly understood the world in which he lived and the people in it. His name was Guido Del Ricci.

We were shown into a long room with huge crystal chandeliers already blazing with light. At each end there were big gilt-framed mirrors. The ceiling was thick with gilt and cupids. In one corner was a big buffet table loaded with food and drinks and presided over by a white-coated servant. In the opposite corner, on a table piled high with flowers, was a picture that looked suspiciously like a Titian. The room was crowded with some twenty or thirty people. The men wore lounge suits, but the women were in evening dress, some of them loaded down with jewellery which glittered in the light.

I thought of the places I had seen the previous night and I whispered to Stuart, ‘This is the other Italy.’

He nodded. ‘This was the Italy of the Fascists,’ he muttered. ‘I’d like to introduce one of the partigiani to this set-up — a grenade in places like this would do Italy a lot of good.’

Our conversation was interrupted by our introduction to the assembled gathering. The frightful ceremony of shaking everybody by the hand had to be gone through.

By the end of it we were none the wiser as to who we had been introduced to, but we had been left standing with two very attractive and expensively dressed girls and a maid appeared with drinks on a great silver tray. The girls stuck by us and I got the impression that they had been detailed to entertain us.

The girl who had attached herself to me said her name was Angelica. She was not exactly an angel. She had a fine full-curved body which her black and silver dress was not designed to hide. Her face was hard with full heavily made-up lips, a slightly turned-up nose, and dark smouldering eyes that gazed up at me as though I was the first man she’d ever seen. She spoke a little English — enough at any rate to tell me that my features were like those of Cesare Borgia and to suggest that we go and dance.

Three big glass doors gave on to a wide tiled terrace lit by coloured lamps. She took my arm and together we leaned over the balustrade and looked down at the dark surface of the sea. To our left the lights of Naples blazed out brazenly. A small band in a corner of the terrace began to play Sorrento and we danced, her body pressed close to mine. The hardness of her face melted in the soft light and the warmth of the night. Her eyes were mischievous, passionate, laughter-filled — they were pools reflecting the rhythm of the band.

The wine and her body so close to mine beat through my blood as we swayed back and forth to the pulsing of the music. Her feet were fairy light and she made love to me with her eyes and her body as we danced and danced.

And then Del Ricci broke the spell. ‘You will pardon me if I interrupt you, Mr Cunningham,’ he said. ‘But I would like to talk business with you for a moment.’ Stuart was with him, and I saw by his eyes that he was in a black mood.

Del Ricci showed us into a quietly furnished study. ‘She is a nice girl, Angelica,’ he said, as he held the door open for me. ‘She is of the corps de ballet at the San Carlo Opera House. She will do well — she is a good dancer and very sympathetic.’

‘Cut the suave stuff, Del Ricci,’ Stuart said, as the door was closed. ‘What’s your business?’

The Italian shot him a quick glance from beneath his heavy eyelids. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘I should have given you Julia, not Anna. She is colder and has more finesse.’ He went over to a decanter and poured out three large whiskies. ‘And now, Mr McCrae,’ he said as he handed us our glasses, ‘let us ignore the trimmings and get down to the basis of life — money. How much do you want for your ship?’ His eyes darted from one to the other of us as though he would read our reactions in our faces. ‘How much, gentlemen?’ he asked.

‘Why do you think we are prepared to sell?’ asked Stuart.

‘A ship is a capital asset, not a pet,’ was his reply. ‘And the value of capital assets can always be assessed.’

‘Why do you want to buy?’ Stuart demanded.

‘Why?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That is surely not your concern. However, I will tell you. I need her for the coastal trade. As you know Italy is very short of transport. I am interested in a big transport company. With your ship I could handle coastal trade with many little towns that even small schooners cannot supply. I hope eventually to buy several of these boats and build up a big coastal trade, which is what Italy should have.’

‘The possibility of building up a coastal trade has not entirely escaped us,’ Stuart told him. ‘In fact within a year, we expect to have a regular service of at least four landing craft using the West Coast.’

Del Ricci smiled. ‘I could make it very difficult for you,’ he said. ‘Whereas if you would sell me the one boat that you have you would immediately make a very good profit which could be invested in something — a little less speculative shall we say?’ He suddenly leaned forward across his desk. ‘I’ll give you twice what she cost new. I’ll give you £20,000. I think I am mad to do it, but I need the ship to keep my transport business going. What do you say, Mr Cunningham? Is that a fair price?’

‘In sterling or lire?’ I asked.

‘Sterling,’ he said.

‘It’s certainly a generous offer,’ I said. I was thinking of a clear profit of nearly £7,00) each apart from the wad of lire we had banked the previous day.

Then Stuart’s quiet voice cut across my thoughts. ‘It’s certainly generous, Mr Del Ricci,’ he said. ‘So generous, in fact, that I know very well that you are not wanting it for your normal trade.’

‘Normally I should concentrate on cargoes that were urgently required.’

‘Arms for instance?’ Stuart’s voice was harsh now.

‘Now really, Mr McCrae …’

Stuart took a pace forward. ‘Listen, Del Ricci, there was a man came to see me in London. He didn’t want to buy the boat, he just wanted me to run the arms for him.

I beat him up and then I threw him down a flight of stairs. Did you know that?’

‘How should I?’ His voice was steady, his features immobile. His eyes were watching Stuart. ‘I need your boat for trade, and I am willing to pay a high price for it.’

‘You are not interested in arms?’ Stuart was tapping a cigarette on the back of a silver case.

‘Certainly not. Why should I be?’

‘That is what I am wondering.’ Stuart lit his cigarette and the match-flame lit up his bearded features and showed his eyes fixed on Del Ricci. ‘At my own request Julia introduced me to a certain Luigi Perroni who is here tonight.’

‘He is the captain of the Pampas. The Pampas is a schooner belonging to my transport company. Why?’

‘A week ago his ship was off Portugal without lights and he was talking Spanish and not Italian.’

‘Is that a criminal offence?’

‘No, but running arms is. And that is what he was doing. He was waiting to pick up a consignment of American munitions that had been routed via Portugal.’

‘That is a very grave charge, Mr McCrae.’

‘I’m glad you realize the gravity of it,’ replied- Stuart coldly.

‘And it is a charge that I do not think you should make behind Perroni’s back. I will get him.’

‘Just a moment, Del Ricci. I do not think I want to listen to Perroni’s lies. I am much more interested in knowing how you stand in the matter. I have no proof that he is running arms — yet. I just know that he is, and he is running them in one of your ships. You want to buy the Trevedra. You have offered twice the market value and you are prepared to pay in sterling. A flat-bottomed landing craft would be a most serviceable ship for running arms. You would be able to run them ashore at any lonely beach — straight ashore in lorries as we ran our cargo this morning.’

‘You are levelling your accusations at me now, McCrae,’ Del Ricci’s voice was still steady but the tone was pitched a shade higher. ‘That is foolish. This country is no longer run by Britain and America. It is run by us and I am a man of some standing here.’

‘So are some of the Black Market profiteers.’

‘Are you suggesting — ‘

‘That you are a Black Market profiteer?’ Stuart shrugged his shoulders. ‘I know that you have a reputation as a clever business man, that your transport company controls all road transport in certain districts and that in those districts essential foodstuffs sold by another concern in which you are interested, The South Italy Produce Coy, are considerably more expensive than in other districts. Arms can be very useful to those who are exploiting the people to the point of desperation.’

‘I think you must be mad to make accusations like this.’ Del Ricci’s eyes were brightly watchful and a nerve at the side of his forehead pulsed tensely.

‘Mad!’ Stuart’s eyes blazed suddenly and the last vestige of liquor-warmth seeped out of me as I sensed the tension in the atmosphere. ‘I lost most of my best friends in this bloody country because a band of hooligans in black shirts marched on Rome some twenty-five years ago. Where did they get their arms? They took control of the country for men of standing who gave them the money to do it and who, in exchange, had exploitation legalized and made it the biggest national industry.

‘Go up the roads to Cassino and Pescara, by Pisa and Florence and through the hills to Rimini. Do you know what those rows and rows of white crosses mean? Every one of them represents the body of a boy killed in the prime of his life because it paid somebody to give a bunch of hooligans arms in 1922. Do you think I am mad to want to see that that does not happen again?’

‘If you are so sure of yourself, why don’t you go to the Questura?’ There was no mistaking the sneer in Del Ricci’s voice.

‘What — in your own territory? A hell of a lot of good that would do. You’ve already threatened me. You’ve already said, “I can make it difficult for you.” That threat was not made lightly. You know your own power.’

‘And you know yours apparently.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stuart’s body was tensed — the whole room was electric. I was very conscious of the fact that we were foreigners in a foreign land.

Del Ricci chuckled and the sound was false in that silent room. ‘When you had the Americans and the Poles and the Indians and the Greeks fighting for you, you didn’t worry about the rights of the Italians to run their own country. But now — ‘

Stuart crossed the room very slowly and Del Ricci’s words ceased as he saw him approach. He seemed fascinated. ‘Do you know how many British boys died or were wounded in Italy to free this country from Fascism? They died in their thousands — and all because they believed in the freedom of peoples to govern their own countries. They were just workers and farm labourers, bank clerks and shopkeepers — and they died that their own country, and all the other countries of the world, should be free.’ Stuart was towering above Del Ricci. Del Ricci slipped his hand inside his jacket. He was frightened. It was then that Stuart hit him. He hit him between the eyes. And Del Ricci was flung back against a bookcase, his head smashing in the glass, and then his body slowly crumpled, his head bleeding profusely from a cut.

Stuart bent down, slipped his hand inside Del Ricci’s jacket and removed a small revolver from an armpit holster. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He opened the door and the silence of the room was invaded by the sound of the band playing Funiculi, Funicula amid the murmur of voices and the chink of glass.

Outside, the city was bright in moonlight. The facades of the villas and apartment houses climbing the hill to the Vomero district were white and full of light and beyond Capri the low-hung disc of the moon shone a path of silver across the dark mirror of the sea.

‘That wasn’t very wise, was it?’ I said.

He made no reply. He was taking long strides and I had difficulty in keeping up with him.

‘And what proof had you that he was running arms? You can’t just accuse — ‘

He stopped suddenly. ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up,’ he said. His eyes glared down at me. He was all tensed up. ‘If you’re prepared to deal with a dirty little Sicilian crook who is making a pile out of his country’s misfortunes, go ahead. But count me out.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Stuart,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you deal with him. I was — ‘

‘I know what you were suggesting,’ he rapped out, and his teeth were clenched. He was fighting for control of himself. ‘You were suggesting that I should have been more polite, that I shouldn’t have hit him when he went for his gun. You people make me sick. You’d see the whole wretched business start all over again. You’d try to persuade yourself that all the crooks grafting their way to power are innocent until proved guilty. And in the end you’ll shrug your shoulders and say that war is inevitable as you watch another million British war graves planted on the Continent.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘All I am — ‘

‘All right — I’m a fool. I should forget.’ He gripped my shoulders and the edge of his nail bit through the cloth of my jacket. ‘But I can’t forget,’ he said. ‘I can’t forget. Do you understand what that means? I can’t forget that I’ve seen boys who should have been taking girls out, shrieking hideously and holding their guts with their hands, that pieces of flesh have been spattered all over me, and that I’ve watched a company of brave men die one by one. And the bodies of the partigiani horribly mutilated up in the Chianti country. And I can’t forget that my wife and kid were burned to death. And it all started here in this country when a bunch of crooks got control and went berserk. God!’ He turned abruptly and started walking again.

Back on the Trevedra, Stuart made tea. He was quite calm again as we sat in the ward-room drinking and smoking, and he told me what he had found out about Del Ricci. ‘As soon as I talked to Perroni I knew what Del Ricci’s proposition was going to be. Perroni knew what it was, too. I fancy he was going to get command of the ship if we’d sold. Then I talked to a man who was a director on the board of Del Ricci’s transport company. He spoke a little English, and reading between the lines I got an impression of the whole set-up. It’s based on monopoly, of course. Individuals and small private concerns who attempt to compete don’t do so well. One big concern had tried to muscle in, but a series of unfortunate fires had cramped their style and they’d had to sell out. He told me that with a day/ling smile which made it difficult to realize that it was to be taken as a threat. Del Ricci has a finger in all sorts of pies — produce, tobacco, furniture, coal — anything that needs transporting. He is also a director of the new Banco Nazionale di Riconstruzione. And, most significant of all, he is one of the interests behind the Massa del Popolo Party which was started about three months ago with its headquarters here in Naples.

‘Well,’ he concluded, ‘that’s Mr Del Ricci for you. And he’s done all that in less than two years. Clearly a bloke to be reckoned with. I should have been more careful perhaps, but — ‘ he shrugged his shoulders. ‘I got mad, that was all. If you like to take your share of the proceeds and get out I shan’t blame you.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘This is my life now. All I would suggest is that in future we talk things over before acting. I agree with your view of Del Ricci, but beating him up doesn’t get us anywhere.’

He nodded gloomily. ‘I should have shot him,’ he said, and then he began to laugh.