Leaving a distinctly worried Micklethwaite sitting by the wire, his sack stuffed up a culvert under the road, the other three strolled into the dump, Clegg and Clutterbuck in their dusty robes, Caccia carrying the Italian forms they’d acquired. As they passed the gate, Caccia gestured at the other two, and the private sitting at a desk checking in the native workers nodded.
Five minutes later Clutterbuck was carrying a brush and Clegg a bucketful of dirty water, both neatly removed by Clutterbuck from alongside a hut where an Arab labourer, who had disappeared round a corner for a smoke, had left them.
‘Tools of the trade,’ Clutterbuck explained. ‘I expect ’e’s usin’ ’em for the same thing we’re goin’ to use ’em for.’
Nobody looked twice at them as they moved about the dump because they looked exactly like an Italian soldier with his two Arab helpers making sure the drains were working.
‘It’s a well-known fact,’ Clutterbuck reassured the nervous Caccia, ‘that if you’re carrying a piece of paper you’re on office business. You’ve got a ’ole sheaf of ’em there.’
Under Scarlatti the dump had become an extensive one and they remained there the whole day. Every hour or so, Clegg carried his bucket to the perimeter and emptied it over the wire, at which point Micklethwaite rose from the ditch where he was squatting and shovelled into his sack the assorted spanners, wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, wire, screws, nuts and bolts which the dirty grey water had hidden.
‘It’s an old dodge,’ Clutterbuck said cheerfully. ‘Them Arabs what work in the camps round the Delta are at it the ’ole time. They caught one old bastard with a sack containing a ’undred and sixty spanners, twelve pressure gauges and fifty spark plugs.’
As they left late in the afternoon, the Italian private on the gate eyed them but said nothing, and they strolled down the road towards the town. They were well pleased with the day’s work, especially Clutterbuck, who had also done the rounds of any unattended petrol tanks he had seen. Micklethwaite was waiting for them by the wire, obviously encouraged by their success.
‘What I tell you?’ Clutterbuck said. ‘They didn’t shoot you arter all, did they?’
‘One Italian tried to kick me.’ Micklethwaite seemed quite pleased that the Italian had thought him worth kicking. ‘An Arab spoke to me too.’
‘What you do?’
‘What you told me. Acted daft. Morton came past,’ he went on. ‘He said he’d pick us up near the mosque.’
They waited close to the Arabs drowsing with their animals near the white dome among the trees. It was impossible for Caccia in his Italian uniform to squat down with them, so he wandered down the street, keeping one eye on the others so he could pick up the car when it appeared.
As he reached the corner, he recognized the standpipe in the road and the Arab women carrying chattis and gossiping in a group round a muddy pool. They reminded him of the Bar Barbieri and he found it only fifty yards further on. As he approached, he was presented with the same performance he’d seen a few days before – Rosalba Coccioli swiping with a cloth which looked as though it was normally used to wipe the floor at Schwartzheiss, the German sergeant he’d seen with her on his last visit to the bar.
The sergeant was hooting with laughter as the girl began to pick up empty bottles and hurl them futilely at him. As he climbed into his kübelwagen, she turned away and savagely began to wipe the tables. As she saw Caccia, however, her expression changed and she waved enthusiastically, pleased to see him.
‘Eh, soldato,’ she said. ‘So you came back after all!’
‘I said I would.’
‘And your friends?’
Caccia waved a hand vaguely.
‘Is our army staying in Zuq this time? I’m tired of going out into the desert every time the place changes hands. So is everybody else.’ She gestured after the German. ‘That Sergeant Schwartzheiss,’ she snapped. ‘He’s always here. He wants to get into my bed.’
Caccia eyed the girl. She had a good figure, long legs, a good behind and, as he could see down the front of her blouse when she bent forward to wipe the tables, a good before too.
‘I would, too,’ he said. ‘If I could.’
She swung at him with the grey cloth but there wasn’t the anger in it with which she had swung at the German.
‘Eh, soldato,’ she said. ‘You have a large mouth.’
‘Noted for it,’ Caccia agreed.
‘You going to Cairo? After the English?’
Caccia shrugged. ‘Mussolini’ll never get to Cairo,’ he said. Nobody had ever explained the strategic or tactical situation to him. It was just a feeling he had.
The girl pulled a face. ‘Mamma mia,’ she said. ‘It’s certain you won’t if that’s how you feel. You might as well pack up and go home to Italy. I expect you’d like that, eh, soldato?’
Caccia shrugged again and she went on in a bitter voice. ‘I’d go back,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow. There’s nothing to keep me in Libya – only a bar with nothing in it except Sicilian wine, vermouth and anisette.’
‘Why did you come here?’
‘My mother died. And then my father died. That frog-faced clown Mussolini put him in prison for speaking his mind and he never came out. I couldn’t stay in Rome. I’d have ended up on the streets. There are plenty of dirty old men who’d have helped me to. So I came here to join my uncle. My aunt had run off with a sergeant in the army and he needed a woman about the house.’
‘Why did he come here?’
She gestured. ‘The government had schemes to help people. Surely you’ve read about them in the papers. He fancied himself as a farmer. Only he didn’t know anything about farming so he ended up doing what he did in Rome. Running a bar. He’s out looking for petrol. We need wine. We need beer. But to get wine and beer you have to go to Derna or
