Authors: Hammond Innes
I felt angry and dispirited. Things seemed to be going wrong. And my mood was not improved when we eventually climbed back into the car to find it seething with a million flies and the smell of dung increasingly unpleasant after the cool dampness of the air in the valley.
Fortunately Boyd had a little money on him and we were able to buy some food in Frosinone and a pair of straw sandals and a cheap cotton dress and underwear for the girl.
She changed into the new clothes behind a stone wall just outside the town. It was staggering the difference they made. The sandals, which were heeled, made her taller and accentuated her long limbs. The bright colours of the cotton print brought out the golden brown of her arms and face, and her small firm breasts, lifted and pointed by a brassiere, thrust impatiently at the cotton of her frock. She had borrowed a comb from Boyd, and her fair hair, combed back from her head, gave her a boyish look.
It was then that I first realised that she was an extremely attractive girl.
She had the black dress in her hand as she came out from behind the wall. She started down the road towards us. But after a few paces she stopped. She looked down for a second at the dress. Then, with a gesture almost of abandonment, she flung it over the wall.
She came towards us then with long, swinging strides. She looked like a Scots girl—very free and easy in her movements. She was smiling as she came up to us as though she had dropped her past over the wall with the black dress.
It was getting hot and the glare of the sunlight as we drove on and lack of sleep made me drowsy. I woke to find Boyd shaking me. “We’re just coming to Cassino,” he said.
High on our left the battered fragments of the monastery stood white and dusty against the blue bowl of the sky like jagged remnants of a gargantuan tooth. We skirted Monastery Hill through neat little rows of jerry-built Government houses. Down the hill into Cassino proper, we found that nature had moved in on the ruins. The place was covered in dusty greenery. It was no longer impressive.
Somehow I felt deeply disappointed. It should have been preserved as a monument to the folly of man. Once the scarred and battered hillside had been terrifying. Now it was just an untidy jumble of weeds. The same thing had happened in France after the previous war.
I don’t know why I hadn’t expected it here. Perhaps because there had been so much talk at the time of preserving the ruins as a warning to future generations. But then of course there had been so many other ruins after Cassino—bigger and better ruins. I had only seen Cassino once before—but it had impressed me the same way that the lava of Vesuvius covering Massa di Somma had impressed me. The sun had been setting and I had been in a jeep travelling from Naples to Rome just after the capital had fallen. There had been no living thing in the whole of Cassino then. The crumbled masonry and gaunt fragments of the battered town had stood solitary and lifeless, the stone a warm dull red in the evening light.
As we slid away from it along the dead straight road of the plain below—the same road that had once been the most heavily shelled stretch in the world and had rightly been called the Mad Mile—the weeds in Cassino seemed fair comment in a world that forgets so quickly the death of its sons.
We had a snack at Capua and got into Naples shortly after three in the afternoon. I told the driver to go straight to the docks. I wanted to find out whether Stuart had fixed up a cargo and if so when we were sailing. There was Monique to accommodate and I needed some money to pay for the hire of the car.
But down on the mole I could see no sign of the
Trevedra.
“Shifted ’er berth, I expect,” said Boyd. And I must say I wasn’t worried. You’re always liable to shift your berth in a big port. He might have had to move to take on his cargo.
I went to the Port Authorities office and enquired for the present berth of the
Trevedra
. The clerk glanced at his chart of shipping. “Not there,” he said. “Perhaps it’s sailed.”
“It couldn’t have done,” I told him.
He glanced down the list of names in his book of sailings. “Here you are,” he said. “Sailed 03.30 last night. Destination—London.”
A sudden hollow feeling hit me in the stomach. “But that’s impossible,” I said. “My name is Cunningham. I’m part owner. She can’t have sailed. She must be standing off in the Bay.”
The clerk wiped a globule of sweat off the end of what would once have been described as a Patrician nose, and looked up at his wall chart again. “No,” he said, “it’s not standing off. You can see for yourself. There are the names of all the ships that are standing off to-night.”
“Probably Mr. McCrae left a note for me then,” I suggested.
He looked round at his message rack. The pigeon-hole under C was empty. To his annoyance I had him look at the address of every envelope in the whole rack. But not one was addressed to me.
There was nothing for it then but to go back to the mole and see if any of the stevedores or the crews of other ships moored alongside could tell us anything.
But somehow I knew it was useless. When I told Boyd, he shook his head and said, “It ain’t like Mr. McCrae. He’s been too long a soldier to leave an RV without notifying the rest where the stragglers’ post is going to be.”
All we could find out from men working on the mole and from neighbouring ships was that the
Trevedra
had pulled out in the early hours of the morning. I actually interviewed a man who had been on watch on the ship that had pulled in to the vacant berth and his timing of the
Trevedra’s
departure confirmed that given me by the clerk at the Port Authorities office.
I tried to ignore the feeling of suspicion that crept into my mind. I couldn’t believe that Stuart was crooked. If he had really sailed for England he must have had good reason. But if he had, he was sure to have left a message for me somewhere—at the bank, for instance.
Having reached that conclusion I felt a sense of relief. “How much money have you got?” I asked Boyd.
“Just over two thousand lire,” he said.
And I had a gold wrist-watch. The bank would be
closed now, but I could pop the watch and that would pay the driver. I paid him the full amount I got for the watch. It was safer to overpay him. Then we went to a quiet tenement hotel behind the waterfront where they didn’t worry about the fact that we had no baggage.
We fed that night at a little
trattoria
full of tobacco smoke and the sour smell of stale vino. Over the meal I told Monique what I knew of her mother. She listened in silence, her big grey eyes fixed on me. When I had finished, she said, “I shall have to work. Will they take me on a farm? I am good with animals. They like me.”
“Farmin’ ain’t the sort o’ work for the likes of you,” Boyd cut in.
She laughed. It was a pleasant musical laugh and it made me feel strangely happy, for it was so light-hearted and gay. “Why not?” she asked. “I’ve been a farm girl for over two years now. What other work is it that I can do?”
What she said was true. There was nothing else she could do. And it was my responsibility that she was leaving the world she knew and going to a strange country that she had only visited twice on holidays. My acceptance of that responsibility produced in me a feeling of tenderness for her—that and the strong wine we were drinking which was
Lacrimo Crisli
from the slopes of Vesuvius. “There’s no need to worry,” I said. “For instance, you might get a job as interpreter. The French tourist traffic is increasing. Every one in Europe wants to come to England to see the ruins of London. Promise me you won’t worry about a job. We’ll see you through.”
She smiled. I think she knew I was getting a little drunk. “I promise,” she said. “And thank you.”
I must have been feeling very tired for my mood changed suddenly to one of despondency. “Anyway, before we worry about getting you a job, we’ve got to get to England,” I said. And then I explained to her about the
Trevedra
and how we didn’t know what had happened.
“What puzzles me,” I continued, turning to Boyd,
“is how he got a crew together in such a short time. He couldn’t have sailed her himself. He would have had to sign on a skipper.”
Boyd shrugged his shoulders. “It ain’t difficult in a big port like this. Though why ’e didn’t wait fer us I can’t think.”
“I should have wired him from Rome,” I said. “But he didn’t suggest there was any urgency.” We had finished our meal now and as Boyd paid the bill, I said, “Anyway, don’t let’s worry about it. I’ll get some money from the bank in the morning and there’ll be a letter from him explaining everything. Then we either follow on the next boat or have a pleasant holiday on Capri waiting for the
Trevedra
to come out again.”
“What about Miss Monique’s papers?” Boyd asked as we went to the door.
“I’ll fix that with the British Consul when I see him in the morning about a new passport,” I told him. “It shouldn’t be all that difficult.”
Outside it was very dark and the streets showed wet in flashes of forked lightning that periodically split the clouds, outlining the mass of the Castello San Elmo towering high above the city. What I had taken to be the sound of traffic, blurred against the hum of conversation in the
trattoria
, had been the distant roll of thunder. The streets were empty. But it was not raining.
I took the girl’s arm as we turned down the street towards our dingy hotel. She started at my touch and stopped, her arm withdrawn from mine as though I had hurt her. The lightning forked and I saw her in its photographic flash rigid against the stone of the houses that flanked the street, her eyes wide and startled. Then it was black again and I heard her voice close to me saying, “Please—it is very foolish of me. I am sorry.” And I remembered all that she had been through and how she had taken her hand from mine as we sat on the pebble-strewn bottom of the stream.
But instead of showing her that I understood, I said, “You’re a strange girl, Monique.”
Then it began to rain big summer drops from the heavy sky and we ran for it through the dark streets to the hotel.
Next morning, the rent in my trousers mended and wearing Boyd’s jacket which fitted me a little tightly, I presented myself at the Banco di Napoli. I explained that my cheque book had been stolen. The cashier gave me an old-fashioned look and asked me for a specimen signature with a sly grin that was a bit wide of the mark in the circumstances. I also asked him for a letter that I was sure my partner had left for me.
In a few minutes he returned with a new book. “I am afraid there is no letter for you from Signor McCrae,” he said. “Here is your new cheque book. I have arranged for no cheques on the old book to be cashed.” Gold teeth flashed in his sallow face and the lenses of thick-rimmed spectacles were blind circles of white as they caught the light from the glass roof. “Our clients often lose their books in Napoli. It is a bad city. Often the girls are working for a forger. It is necessary for us to be very careful. Were you thinking of drawing at all, Signor Cunningham?” I had opened the new book and was on the point of writing out a cheque for twenty thousand.
He had to repeat the question for my mind was struggling to grasp the fact that Stuart had left me no message. “Are you sure my partner did not leave a note for me?” I asked.
“Quite sure,” he said. “They are always left with Signor Borgioli, one of our assistant managers. If you like I will ask the cashiers?”
I nodded and he went along the counter. I watched him as he spoke to each of the cashiers in turn. One by one they glanced curiously at me and shook their heads.
Then suddenly he was back again with a little man who had false teeth that did not fit and a little pointed beard. “This is Signor Mercedes. He saw Signor McCrae the day before yesterday.”
The little man nodded vigorously. “
Si, si
—he was a tall man with a beard, yes? He came in the morning and drew out all the cash in your account except for a nominal thousand lire.”
“He drew out all the cash in our account?” I repeated I couldn’t believe it.
“Except for the nominal thousand. He said he had to pay for a cargo, but would be banking with us again on the return trip.”
“That was why I was asking whether you wished to draw, signore,” put in the first cashier. “It would be very difficult—impossible. The manager would not agree—that is except for the thousand lire. You have only had an account with us for a few days.”
“And he left no note—no message?” I asked again.
They both shook their heads.
There was nothing I could do. I thanked them and went out into the sunlit roar of the Via Roma.
It was hot and that horrible doubt of Stuart was back in my mind. There was only one other place in Naples he could have left a message for me. Guidici’s office above the Galleria Umberto.
I turned left down the Via Roma. It was in the Galleria that I first realised how desperate our position was. The sun streamed through the glassless roof and the heat of it struck up from the tiled paving. But it looked cool under the gaudy umbrellas of the pavement cafés where the usual prostitutes sat sipping iced drinks, waiting to pick up a man or for their pimps to bring a client to them. I felt the need of a drink badly.
It was then that I realised that I hadn’t any money. I couldn’t have a drink. I couldn’t even eat. All we had in the world was the remains of Boyd’s two thousand.
I went up the dark stairs to Guidici’s office with a foreboding that there would be no message for me. And I was right.
The secretary shook her dark mop of hair at me and her eyes fastened like black buttons on the roughly patched rent in my trousers. I insisted upon seeing
Guidici himself. But there was no message. “Signor McCrae has not been here at all since he came with you about the cargo,” he said.
There was nowhere else I could go.
I went back to the hotel and explained the situation to Boyd and Monique. We sat in committee in my room. We called for our bill and found that it left us with just four hundred and twenty-six lire. And Boyd had a cheap wrist-watch. That was all we had between ourselves and starvation.