The Wedding Officer

24

THE APPLICANT’S name was Vittoria Forsese, and she was demurely dressed in a black frock. Her first husband, she said, had died fighting in Greece. But now, a year later, she had been lucky enough to meet another man who cared for her, a corporal in the Engineers.

James could see why her fiancé had been attracted to her. She was extremely pretty and completely charming.

“And what have you been living off?” he asked, his pen poised over his notebook.

There was just the faintest of pauses. “Savings.”

“Which bank do you have your savings in?”

Another pause. “The Banco di Napoli.”

Something about that name rang a bell. “Wasn’t that the bank the Germans raided?”

“Yes. To pay for their war. They stole everything.”

“So how have you been supporting yourself since then?”

“My neighbors give me food sometimes,” she said hesitantly.

“Can you tell me their names?”

Another pause. “Sometimes it’s one neighbor, sometimes another.”

“Is there anyone who can vouch for you? I must have a name, you see, and follow it up.”

“I don’t remember,” she muttered.

“You don’t remember your neighbors’ names?”

She shrugged miserably.

He glanced around the little apartment. It was spotlessly clean, and hardly opulent. But there were the usual telltale signs—a lipstick in the bedroom, a small jar of olive oil in the kitchen, a pair of shoes with leather soles instead of wood. “The money comes from soldiers, doesn’t it?” he said gently. She did not answer, but a tear rolled silently down one side of her face.

He considered what to do next. She was beautiful; she seemed hardworking, loyal and sweet-natured. And she had had the ridiculous good fortune to meet someone she loved who loved her.

He hesitated, his pen still hovering over his notebook. Then, abruptly, he came to a decision. Closing the notebook with a snap, he got to his feet and held out his hand.

“You must be very fortunate in your neighbors,” he said. “Not to mention your fiancé. Congratulations, Vittoria. I can see no reason why you shouldn’t be married as soon as possible.”

As he walked away from her apartment, her tears of gratitude still damp on his cheeks, he stopped and took a deep breath. Naples was going about its business, much as it always did. The sun was shining. High above his head, two unseen housewives were arguing across the narrow gap which separated their apartments. On the street, two old men stopped and greeted each other with a kiss. In a shady doorway, a plump baby sat on its mother’s lap and surveyed its surroundings regally, as if from a throne, gravely accepting the salutations and tickles of passersby. From somewhere the smell of tomatoes simmering with parsley and garlic wafted majestically down the street, mingling with the dusty scent of hot stone. The baby’s mother smiled shyly at James, and he tipped his hat to her in response.

Yes, he thought, Vittoria Forsese was indeed fortunate in her neighbors. As they all were, in this extraordinary city.

25

MORE AND more often, James found himself making excuses to hang around the kitchen.

“Don’t you have a war to fight?” Livia asked him once.

“I don’t really do fighting,” he explained. “I’m not fierce enough.”

“I think you’re very fierce.”

“Really?” He felt ridiculously pleased.

“When you pointed your gun at my tank, I was scared.”

“Not half as scared as I was,” he assured her. He gestured toward the tomatoes she was peeling. “Let me help with those.”

“If you like.”

He loved to watch her slim fingers turning the vegetables this way and that, twisting the flesh out of the bursting skins, and to try to copy what she was doing.

“Tell me more about this girl of yours,” she said as they worked.

He glanced at her. The temptation to fantasize was irresistible. “Well,” he said, “she’s quite small, and rather skinny. And she has dark hair. She teases me a lot. And she’s rather…imperious. She likes to boss people around.”

“She sounds a little bit like me. Not the bossy bit, of course. But what she looks like.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I suppose she is a little bit like you. That hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Perhaps, if you’d never met her, you would have liked me instead. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“Livia,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

They worked in silence for a few moments.

“Captain Gud?”

“Please,” he said, “I’d much rather you called me James.”

“Joms?”

He smiled. “Yes?”

“What’s a ‘pot’?”

“It’s a pan. Like that.” He indicated the saucepan on the stove.

“That’s what I thought.” She put another handful of tomatoes into the saucepan. “So how can I be a pot?”

“Who says you are?”

“Eric. He says I’m a sexy pot.”

“Does he?” he heard his own voice say. “And when was this?”

“This morning. Did I tell you? He’s teaching me to speak English.”

Well, he didn’t waste any time, James thought. Bloody Yanks. Oversexed and over here, as the saying went.

“He’s taught me three phrases,” she said proudly. “Would you like to hear them?”

“I think I’d better,” he muttered.

She stopped chopping, the better to concentrate on what she was saying. “Eylo, Jimms. Mare nem ees Livia. Ay lick ver’ much to cock.” She looked at him triumphantly.

“Cook.”

“That’s what I said. ‘Cock.’”

“No, ‘cook.’You said ‘cock.’”

“So?”

“In English it’s a rude word.”

Her eyes widened. “Yes? What does it mean?”

“It means—well, a man’s parts. Like cazzo.”

“Now I’ve embarrassed you.”

“Not at all.”

“I hope you’re not this shy with your girl,” she said mischievously.

“As a matter of fact,” he said tersely, spearing a tomato with his knife, “I am.”

Livia had finally realized why James was behaving in such an odd manner. The way he veered back and forth between friendliness and pomposity, the blushing whenever anything sexual was mentioned, the absence of any attempt to grope her, the hanging around in the kitchen chatting, the obvious nonsense about the imaginary girlfriend whom he couldn’t even describe properly, the ridiculous formality, and the fact that he was such a good dancer, all pointed to a very obvious explanation. Captain Gould was a finocchio, a piece of fennel; in other words, homosexual.

Livia’s reaction to her own brainwave was interesting. First of all, she clapped her hands together, delighted at her own cleverness. Of course! Why hadn’t she realized sooner? It really did explain everything. She had no personal objection to homosexuals—there had been a boy in the village who had always preferred the company of the girls, trying their lipsticks and putting ribbons in his hair, and after she was married and moved to Naples she had known several young men who went with tourists for money. She had noticed that they, too, often found it easier to befriend women than their own sex, which explained her own growing friendship with the captain.

Her second reaction was a sense of disappointment. This took her by surprise, somewhat, and she spent a little time working out why it should be so. It surely wasn’t that she was interested in the captain for herself. No, she decided; it was just that homosexuals were by and large sad, unhappy people, doomed to live unfulfilled lives, and since she quite liked the captain, she decided to show him that she, for one, did not mind what his sexuality was, by being as pleasant to him as possible.

Once she had settled this in her own mind she felt much better, and the sense of disappointment she had felt was lessened by the new anticipation of having him as her friend.

James went to find Eric, but found his way barred by an orderly. “Restricted area, sir. CIC only.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I work here.”

“It’s for security reasons.”

“We’re on the same side, for God’s sake.” He tried to push past, but the orderly—who was in fact, James now saw, standing here for exactly this purpose, as a kind of sentry—was equally insistent.

“James.” It was Eric, hurrying out as soon as he saw who it was. “What’s up, buddy?”

“I can’t get into my own offices, for one thing.”

“It’s just a temporary precaution,” Eric soothed him. “There are a few sensitive files lying around, that’s all.”

“So sensitive you can’t show them to your allies?”

Eric shrugged. “Bureaucracy. You know how it is, James—someone gets upset about something, an order’s issued, we’re the poor dopes who have to see it through. But what’s bugging you?”

He had taken James by the arm and led him into another room. James said pointedly, “Mrs. Pertini.”

Eric raised an eyebrow. “The beautiful Livia? What’s the problem?”

“You’ve been teaching her English. Or rather,” he said sarcastically, “American, which is not quite the same thing.”

Eric ignored the insult. “Between you and me, James, I hope to teach her a great deal more than that,” he said with a grin. “But so what?”

“You called her a sexpot.”

Eric laughed.

“It’s hardly a proper way to behave,” James snapped. “The clue is in the name, Eric. Mrs. Pertini? She’s married.”

“But her husband’s dead,” Eric pointed out. He saw James’s expression. “You didn’t know? He got himself killed in Russia, fighting for the Germans.”

“Oh,” James said.

“Although at that point she hadn’t seen him for four years. As you’d know yourself if you’d taken the trouble to have her vetted.”

It was true: He had given her the job without knowing anything about her.

“She could have been a German spy, James,” Eric said, enjoying his discomfort. “And that story in her file about being a member of a partisan group rang several alarm bells.”

“Livia has a file?”

“Oh, everyone has a file,” Eric said vaguely. He clapped James on the back. “So now that your chivalrous Brit instincts have been reassured, presumably it’s OK for me to give the lady language lessons? After all, it’s not as if you’re in the running.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless it’s something rather less chivalrous you had in mind for yourself?”

“Of course not,” James said stiffly.

“Well, there you are, then. Keep yourself pure for—what was her name?”

“What? Oh. Er, Jane.”

“Keep yourself pure for Jane.”

He strode back to his desk, pointedly ignoring the sentry who still stood guard outside the Americans’ rooms. A great feeling of elation was sweeping over him. Livia wasn’t married. All he had to do now was to remove the small impediment of his imaginary engagement to Jane, and then he would be able to court her—and the sooner the better, given that Eric had clearly stolen a march on him.

Disposing of Jane was easy. Men got letters from home jilting them all the time. No, even better than a jilting, he thought, would be a tragic bereavement. He could announce Jane blown to smithereens by a doodlebug, or mown down by a Messerschmitt’s cannon. The blackout provided plenty of good opportunities for a fatal accident: motor cars without headlights, sharing the dark streets with pedestrians without torches, had caused so many casualties that another one wouldn’t be a problem. Or perhaps something more noble was in order. Jane could have parachuted into France on a hush-hush mission and been captured by the Nazis…. He was just mulling over the possibilities when, like a thunderbolt, an appalling thought struck him. He was the wedding officer.

He remembered what Jackson had said on James’s first evening in Naples. Got to set the right example. He could imagine only too well what Major Heathcote would say if James himself applied for permission to marry an Italian girl.

Of course, there were officers who carried on relationships with Italians without necessarily intending to marry them. But that was quite different from courting a woman in the full knowledge that marriage was impossible. And he suspected that in any case the laxity shown to other officers might not apply to someone in his position. The high command could hardly approve of the wedding officer openly flaunting just the sort of relationship he was meant to be discouraging.

As he sat there, miserably weighing up the options, the door opened and Livia came in, bearing a glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

“Good morning,” she said brightly. “It’s so hot, I brought you a drink.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

He took the glass from her and drank. It was good, the lemon naturally sweet and refreshing. He noticed that Livia was lingering, evidently eager to chat. Over the last few days she had definitely started to find him more agreeable. Previously, this observation would have sent him into a spiral of jubilation. Now, it only served to deepen his misery.

“How are you?” he asked glumly.

“Me? Oh, I’m well. Do you know,” she said casually, “it’s occurred to me that I have plenty of friends in Naples. Male friends. You really ought to meet some of them. There’s Dario, for example. I think you’d like him.”

He raised his hands from the desk and let them fall again. “Livia, I don’t have time to meet your friends. I’ve got too much work to do.”

“But you should make time to have some fun. Dario’s nice. You’d have a lot in common. And”—she paused significantly—“he has a lot of friends like him.”

He saw what was happening now: This friend of hers had asked her if she could use her contacts with the Allies to get him some kind of employment as an informant. Normally he refused such requests, but this was Livia…. “Perhaps I could meet him one evening,” hesuggested wearily. “But you’d better warn him, it’ll have to be a quick one. I’m not really looking for anyone permanent at the moment.”

“But if the right person happens to come along…”

“And I don’t pay,” he warned her. “Not unless it’s something really special.”

“Of course not,” she said, a little uncomfortable at the frankness of this conversation. “I don’t think that would worry Dario, although I happen to know he’s taken money for it in the past.”

“That was probably for a different position,” he explained.

Livia—who after all was a country girl, and had thought herself unshockable—was shocked. She retired to the kitchen, her cheeks burning.

James sighed. Involuntarily he watched her as she walked to his door, with that hint of sway in her hips that all Italian girls seemed to have, and then the final toss of a length of black hair over the shoulder as she left the room…. It’s no use, he thought. I’m in love. I’m in lovewith Livia Pertini.

It was rotten luck, but there was only one solution. He couldn’t go out with her, so he would just have to keep his feelings hidden, in the hope, first, that he wouldn’t make a complete ass of himself, and second that he wouldn’t cause Livia any unnecessary embarrassment.