He fished. ‘Which would you prefer?’
Her shoulders lifted. ‘I worked in England once. I speak good English. Listen: “Pass down the bus, please. No standing on the platform.” How about that? And “What is your choose?” when you ask someone to have a drink. And when one has had a triumph, “Bob’s your ankle.” Who is this Bob, I wonder.’
‘Nobody in particular,’ Caccia said. ‘It’s just a phrase. “Bob’s your uncle.”’
‘Ah! I visited many places in London. Waterloo Square and Trafalgar Station. Named for battles when the English beat Napoleon.’
‘You mean Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Station. Trafalgar Square’s got a big column in it with a statue of Admiral Nelson on top.’
‘Sì. A proud nation, the English. I’ve also seen the Arco di Marma. The Arch of Marble.’
‘The English call it the Marble Arch.’
‘Such wealth!’ She turned the words over on her tongue. ‘Is it really of marble? I wish I’d stayed in England. They’d probably have put me in prison when Italy came into the war but I think I’d rather be in prison in England than free in Italy. There isn’t much difference. Except that they get fed in England. Meat several times a week, they say. Even with a war on. And they don’t have that loud-mouthed stallion Mussolini shouting at them.’ She sighed. ‘It was better here when the English soldiers were here. They don’t pinch your bottom like the Italians. It’s always better when there are soldiers here. Most of the civilians are gone.’
‘No other Italian girls?’
‘One or two. I have a friend, Teresa Gelucci. But most of them work in the officers’ hotels. Some of them have even become officers’ groundsheets. I wouldn’t work for them.’
‘The Italians are their allies.’
She sniffed. ‘I am not truly Italian. I’m a cosmopolitan. I’ve been to London. I stopped a day in Paris on the way home, and I have worked in German Switzerland.’ She paused for a moment and sighed; in the sigh was all her longing for the romance of big cities.
‘It’s dead here,’ she went on. ‘I think they take the sidewalks in after dark. No clothes – where would you buy clothes in Zuq? No lipstick, no face-powder. No perfume nearer than Derna. The ships carry only shells and guns.’
Caccia remembered what Clutterbuck had seen. ‘I can get you lipstick,’ he offered. ‘I can get you perfume.’
‘I’d like that.’ She looked sad. ‘I wish my mamma hadn’t died. I’d still have been in England. I might have married an Englishman like my cousin, Cecilia Neri. She thought they’d put her in prison but she had a couple of children and they couldn’t put the wife of a soldier and the mother of his kids in prison. They’re not like Hitler over there, you know. She’s all right, too, because there are plenty of other Italians round her. Well’ – she gestured – ‘not Italian Italians. English Italians. They look after her. It used to be easy for Italians to go to England. They set up in London. Soho. That’s where this cousin of mine lives. Her husband has a big house with lawns and gardens. In Dean Street.’
‘There aren’t any big houses with lawns and gardens in Dean Street,’ Caccia said. ‘It’s all shops and offices and restaurants.’
‘You know London?’
Caccia did a little quick thinking. ‘Worked there before the war. A month or two. In a restaurant.’
‘Harrods?’
‘Harrods isn’t a restaurant. It’s a big store.’
She sighed again. ‘My cousin Cecilia was lucky. She was going to pay a visit to her family in Rome but she found she was having another baby and couldn’t go. She was lucky. The war started and she’d have had to stay. Her husband’s family have a food store called the Continental Market. Angelo Donatello her father-in-law’s called. Her husband’s called—’
‘Max.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘You know him?’
Caccia had spoken without thinking and he hurriedly backed down. ‘No, no.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve been to Soho? You know the Donatellos?’
‘No, no.’ Caccia’s automatic response to a familiar name was getting him into trouble. The unbelievable coincidence that this girl was a cousin of the wife of a man he’d known all his life, who’d attended the same school, chased the same girls, gone to the same dances, seemed impossible.
But he’d been to Max Donatello’s wedding and kissed the bride because Max Donatello was the son of a grocer like Caccia himself, working in and living above a shop redolent with Italian scents and hung with sausages and peppers and Italian vegetables. He’d even been called up with Caccia but, because his interests had always been with filling his stomach, he had managed to get into the Catering Corps and was now a sergeant chef in an officers’ mess in England, able to get home at regular intervals to his wife, the Italian girl who was cousin, by God, to this girl who was leaning on the counter of her uncle’s bar, staring at him with large, dark, suspicious eyes.
He was still considering how to convince her when he heard the car outside. He was glad to bolt.
‘Ciao,’ he said. ‘See you again!’
She didn’t answer and as he appeared outside the door Clutterbuck stuck his head from the car. He was still wearing his galabiyah and make-up but like the others was smoking a British Players.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Look slippy!’
Caccia glanced at the girl, who
