“Not my door, old thing. Your door, now.” Suddenly, Jackson’s mood seemed to brighten. “Do you know, I think I might have those sea urchins after all. Since it’s my last night.” He gestured to the waiter. “What about you? They do a perfectly acceptable sausage and egg.”
“That sounds wonderful.” When the waiter had taken their orders, James persisted, “Tell me, though—what is a wedding officer, exactly? There wasn’t anything in the briefing notes.”
“Ah.” Jackson seemed unsure where to begin. “Well, it’s rather an odd one. Ever since the Allies arrived, there have been a number of soldiers wanting to marry local girls. Quite a large number—in fact, it looked as if it might be starting to get quite out of hand. Of course, any serviceman who wants to marry has to get the CO’s permission. So, in an attempt to stem the tide, the CO decided that every potential fiancée has to be vetted to confirm that she’s suitable and of good character.”
“But what on earth does ‘good character’ mean?”
“Basically, that she isn’t a whore.” Jackson shrugged. “The fact of the matter is that she’s bound to be, given what we were saying earlier. Your job is simply to gather the evidence. If she’s got enough food, or if there’s any furniture left in her apartment, she’s a tart. If she can afford soap rather than cleaning herself with charcoal, she’s a tart. If she can afford olive oil, or white bread, or lipstick, she’s a tart. Just ask her what she’s living on. Nine times out of ten she’ll tell you there’s an uncle somewhere, but that story never stands up to much scrutiny.”
“Doesn’t sound too difficult.”
Jackson stared at him. For a moment his eyes had the vacant, dispossessed look James had seen on the faces of Blitz victims and battlefield casualties. Then he passed his hand over his face, and seemed to recollect where he was. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” A jug of red wine arrived, and Jackson poured them both large glasses, splashing some over the tablecloth in the process. “Per cent’ anni.”
“Cheers.”
As he set his glass down James noticed that a man at a nearby table was watching them with an amused expression on his face. From his expensive suit James deduced that he was both a civilian and someone of importance. He was dining with a group of American staff officers. The man caught James’s eye, and raised his hand in ironic greeting.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Who? Oh, him. His name’s Zagarella. He’s a pharmacist, though his real occupation is professional cockroach. He’s the man behind most of the stolen penicillin.”
“Can’t you arrest him?”
Jackson smiled mirthlessly. “I did, once. It didn’t get me anywhere. As you can see, he has some rather well-connected friends.”
Their food came. The sausage and egg was, as Jackson had promised, perfectly acceptable, and seemed to be made with real eggs, not dried, and genuine meat instead of bully. After months of tinned rations James devoured it eagerly.
Jackson picked up his sea urchins, avoiding the violet spikes, and spooned the brightly colored insides into his mouth. James had never seen anything like it. Presumably it was an austerity measure, like the cafés at home that served whale meat pie. “May I taste that?” he asked curiously.
“All right,” Jackson said somewhat unenthusiastically, passing one over. James dipped his knife into the soft yolky innards and touched it to his tongue. There was a taste of seaweed, but also a rich, salty creaminess, strange but not unpleasantly so. He struggled to think of anything in his experience it could be compared with.
“It’s like—like whelks with custard,” he suggested.
“If you say so.” Jackson ate the rest of his sea urchins quickly, without offering to share any more.
As they ate he explained what James’s other duties would involve. Notionally, FSS were responsible for anything that could affect the security of the Allied Military Government. “In theory, that means intelligence gathering. But there isn’t any intelligence in Naples anymore, only wild rumor. Just last week the Americans produced half a dozen so-called reliable reports that a suicide panzer division had holed up in Mount Vesuvius and was waiting to come out and pounce on our rear. It took me three days to verify what I knew all along, which is that it was all a piece of nonsense.”
“You don’t seem very impressed by our Allies,” James said.
“Well, we do have more experience of this sort of thing. Africa and India and so on.” Jackson poured himself some more wine. “We’re just naturally better suited to running an empire.”
James murmured something about the Germans having had a similar notion, but Jackson was disinclined to pick up on any irony.
“Actually, the Krauts ran this place pretty well. They didn’t have any trouble with VD, for example. They simply imprisoned any girl who passed on an infection, and gave the soldier concerned a field punishment for good measure—despoiling the purity of the master race and so on. We’re supposed to be more civilized, which gets us into all sorts of trouble.”
There was a curious incident when Jackson asked for the bill. Before it could be drawn up, Angelo, the maître d’, sidled over to the table and said that there would be no charge “for the British secret policemen.” He bowed to James. “A very warm welcome to you, Captain Gould. I hope we’ll see you here often.”
“How does he know my name?” James asked when Angelo had gone.
Jackson shrugged. “It’s his business to know everyone.”
“I’m not really happy about this,” James said.
“Why not?”
“It’s my first evening in Naples. I don’t see that I can start off by accepting—well, what could be construed as a bribe.”
“That’s the way it’s done here, I’m afraid. You grease my palm, I’ll grease yours. Angelo doesn’t mean any harm.”
“But technically, this place shouldn’t even be open.”
“They’re getting back to normal. It’s just not the same as our normal, that’s all.”
“I still want to pay my half,” James said doggedly. He called to the waiter, who went to fetch a bill.
“Il conto,” he said, putting it on the table with a smile. James looked at it: It came to more than two weeks’ army wages.
“Can I give you one last piece of advice, Gould?” Jackson said when James had finished paying.
“Of course.”
Jackson hesitated. Then he said slowly, “This place isn’t like home. There aren’t any rules here, only orders. Just follow the orders, and you’ll be all right. But if you try to make sense of it—well, you’ll go completely mad.”
As they left the restaurant they came upon a scuffle—two British soldiers beating up a local boy, no older than fifteen. One of the soldiers had him by the arms, while the other was setting about him with a chair leg. Blood was streaming from the boy’s head. A dark, pretty girl not much older than the boy watched helplessly from a few yards away.
“What’s going on?” Jackson called sharply. “Stop that at once.” The soldiers backed off reluctantly, and the two FSS men hurried forward to question them.
It turned out that earlier the boy had pimped his sister to them. A price had been fixed, but the boy had taken the money—or rather, the three packets of cigarettes that had been agreed as payment—and made a dash for it. The soldiers had come across them again later, and had set about teaching them a lesson. James made a show of taking their names and numbers, but it was clearly going to be impossible to do more. He sent them on their way and they left, still muttering threats.
While he was dealing with the men Jackson had been talking in a low voice to the girl and her brother, who then slipped off into the shadows themselves. “Not a happy story,” he said as James rejoined him. “And not as straightforward as it looks. The children are scugnizzi—haven’t seen their parents in over a year. The girl has syphilis, so she was at least partly motivated by a desire not to spread it any further when she ran off. I gave her the address of a hospital that may be able to get her some penicillin, though I doubt she’ll be able to afford it. It’s a classic vicious circle. She’ll have to sleep with a dozen more soldiers to get the funds to clear up her own infection, by which time those men will have infected a dozen more girls.”