Naples '44 by Norman Lewis Page B

including ammunition, and it flabbergasted him that it was possible for anyone to be concerned about the fate of one abandoned old woman. ‘If it worries you so much,’ he said, ‘why not just let the old man go?’
    From Afragola I went to the MP’s HQ to take away samples of wire, and then on to Signals for expert examination. ‘Of course it’s German wire,’ the Captain said, ‘but half the wire we use is. It’s our wire now. Surely it all depends when the cutting took place?’ He studied the copper where it had been chopped into. ‘Looks quite bright, doesn’t it?’
    Back at HQ I recommended Priore’s release, and was told that the recommendation was out of order. Priore was held in Poggio Reale at the disposition of the Military Police, noted for their stubborn defence of their territorial rights. So Priore would be brought to trial in a week’s time – or maybe two weeks, or even three weeks, depending on pressure of business in the courts. Meanwhile the wife would die alone in their shack. There was nothing whatever to be done.
January 14
    Rumours are the standby – the bread and butter – of any security section, and in a section like this where a daily report is insisted upon, and material has to be raked up to fill it from one source or another, they are avidly snatched up for use as space-fillers. It is said that in some sections, less worthy than ours, they are unscrupulously manufactured by section members themselves. At all events, whether true or – as in most cases – false, they are rarely of the slightest importance.
    This morning’s rumour, picked from my report by the FSO, proved to be the rare exception, and in reading it he fairly bounded from his chair and within minutes was on his way to Army Headquarters. The rumour was that an invasion was planned at Anzio, just south of Rome, and would take place next week. An hour or two later the FSO was back, frothing with excitement. In this case the rumour was fact. The invasion was on, and I was ordered forthwith to track down the source of the leak which might necessitate having to call the whole operation off.
    A ticklish business indeed, because the information came from theGemellis with whom I dined last night. Since the time of the arrest of their next-door neighbour Signora Esposito-Lau, I had struck up a friendship with both Norah and her husband Alberto, and it was a friendship of the kind that I hoped would outlast the war. Whenever I found myself at a loose end of an evening it had become my habit to run up to the Via Filippo Palizzi and spend it with my friends chatting about life in general, or listening to readings of poetry by Norah, usually from Dante or Leopardi. Through the Gemellis I had made a network of friendships, and now being told that I was obliged to go back to these people and browbeat them if necessary, to obtain further information, meant the certain loss of their confidence and their affection.
    I saw Norah and did the best I could to explain the predicament I was in. The fact that she was only half Italian and had either inherited or believed she had inherited emotional attitudes from her Irish mother, clearly helped. She clung to a sentimental fictional view of our basic rectitude as a nation. I was Welsh, too, which was half way to being Irish. We were all Celts together, united in our little Camorra against the big Camorra of Naples, the Americans and other foreigners in general. The upshot was I got the name of an Ingeniere Crespi, at whose house at a dinner-party attended by the Gemellis the thing had started, and Norah went off to see Signora Crespi and prepare her for my visit.
    Fortunately the honoured and terrible tradition of Omertà is gradually dying out in the Neapolitan upper classes. Had the sweet and smiling little Signora Crespi and her family inhabited a basso in Sant’ Antonio Abate, stronghold in Naples of all the