Something Wholesale by Eric Newby Page B

Burlington Arcade and was if anything in a worse state of nerves than I was – the lapels of the suit he had made me had an edge on them like a fine saw – I saw a well-remembered figure baying for a taxi on the steps of White’s Club.
    I had been in the same prison camp as John de Bendern in Italy. He had been one of the first members of the Western Desert Force to be taken prisoner when his tank had had one of its tracks blown off in an encounter with the enemy and had gone round in gradually decreasing circles until it had stopped completely. He had been an admirable prisoner, at least so far as the Allies were concerned. Not for a moment had he allowed his hosts to interfere with his way of life, which was at all times wildly idiosyncratic. With other members of the club in exile he played baccarat in one of the cellars. Stakes were high at the big table and letter cards intended for communicating with next-of-kin were used as cheques. They were invariably cashed in London on settlement day. It was said that one squire from the Welsh Marches had to sell his family estate in order to meet debts incurred in the cellar. A South African who thought the whole thing was a joke had issued a letter card that had bounced. The rumour ran that he was refused admission to his club when he returned home after the war.
    ‘I’ve just come from Italy,’ said de Bendern, ceasing to emit the truly extraordinary noises with which he was trying to attract a taxi. ‘I’ve just seen Wanda. She wants to know when you’re coming.’
    Wanda was a Slovene girl who had helped me to escape from the camp in which I was a prisoner, after the Italian Armistice in 1943. She had secreted me in the maternity wing of a small hospital in which I had been forced to take refuge with a broken ankle. During the weeks in which I had been hidden there she had visited me daily in order to give me lessons in Italian. This process involved a good deal of poring over textbooks with our heads close together and in spite of the oppressive chaperonage exercised by the nuns who were in charge of the place we had contrived to fall in love. When the Germans had finally discovered my whereabouts and had come to take me to Germany it was Wanda who had arrangedmy escape in the middle of the night by the way of a drain pipe and who met me half a mile away in a motor car. As a result of her efforts on my behalf both she and her parents suffered great privation and her father had been taken to the Gestapo cellar in Parma which he had miraculously survived.
    Our courtship, interrupted by my abrupt departure for Germany and another period of imprisonment, also survived and during the last weeks it had blossomed on paper notwithstanding the barriers of language. My Italian lessons had been cut short before I had done any written work and Wanda had very little English.
    ‘Come inside,’ said de Bendern. ‘There’s a fellow there I’ve never seen before. He’s got some extraordinary outfit. He needs people who know Italy. He’ll fix you up.’
    Inside, just as in a play in which economy has to be exercised in the number of characters, was Johnny X, the young Captain I had last seen in the wood in Sussex who had been with me at Sandhurst, now metamorphosed into a full Colonel. The whole thing was settled at the bar.
    ‘It’s M.I.9,’ said the juvenile Colonel. ‘I can’t tell you any more about it here. You’ll have to go to our place in the country, to sign on.’ He gave me a chit for the War Office.
    ‘Shuttle car’s at four o’clock,’ said the elderly Major to whom I was finally presented. He invested me with an aura of secrecy which after some weeks of open-cast living in the Coat Stockroom I found gratifying.
    ‘Just sign this will you?’ I signed a document which threatened me with the most dreadful penalties if I breathed a word to a living soul about what I was to see and do. As I had no idea of what this was I was able to do so without