The Good Left Undone(72)
THE DAILY MIRROR
By John Boswell
There are more than 20,000 Italians in Great Britain. London alone shelters more than 11,000 of them. The London Italian is an indigestible unit of population. He settles here more or less temporarily, working until he has enough money to buy himself a little land in Campania or Tuscany. He often avoids employing British labour. It is much cheaper to bring a few relations into England from the old hometown. And so the boats unloaded all kinds of brown eyed Francescas and Marias, beetle-browed Ginos, Titos and Marios . . . now every Italian colony in Great Britain and America is a seething cauldron of smoking Italian politics. Black Fascism. Hot as Hell. Even the peaceful, law abiding proprietor of the back-street coffee shop bounces into a fine patriotic frenzy at the sound of Mussolini’s name . . . we are nicely honeycombed with little cells of potential betrayal. A storm is brewing in the Mediterranean. And we, in our droning, silly tolerance are helping it to gather force.
Grizelle McVicars picked up a pencil and circled the word “betrayal.” He’ll be back, she said confidently to herself.
* * *
Amedeo Mattiuzzi the jeweler had received a wire from his cousin in London dated 28 April 1940: See you in Brighton. L.M.
The wire was code and carried a dire warning. Mattiuzzi had to move his important inventory out of the shop immediately. His wife studied the newspapers upstairs and made notes in Italian that she kept in an empty flour bin. She cut out articles about Britalians and Tallies who had been picked up in the streets of London for small crimes or on the suspicion of them. The articles mentioned gambling, illegal wine production, black market hard-liquor sales, and fenced jewelry. But the truth was, a man only needed his Italian surname to be implicated.
Mattiuzzi soon had proof that something dire had been planned. The equerry from Holyroodhouse showed up unannounced and asked for the ruby brooch and pin set that had been commissioned by the royal family. The previous plan had been for Mattiuzzi to keep the jewel until a ceremony the following spring. They must know something, Mattiuzzi figured. He gave them the jewelry, and they offered no excuse for the change of plan in return.
Trusting his cousin’s urgent warning, slowly, over the course of two days, Mattiuzzi and his son removed pieces from the display cases, leaving identical paste copies behind, so as not to rouse suspicions.
When the enemy was invisible, you must be too.
Mattiuzzi wrapped the fine jewels in muslin, hid them in his coat, and went to morning Mass, where, instead of leaving out the front door, he stole down the steps of the sacristy, to the underground crypt, where he hid the inventory in the wall beneath Saint Andrew’s Cathedral. Mattiuzzi walked back to his shop confident no one had seen him hide his valuable inventory.
The bells on the door of Mattiuzzi’s shop jingled. Father and son were in the back sorting their tools. They looked at each other. Mattiuzzi motioned to his son to stay in the workroom. He removed his apron and went to the front room.
“How may I help you, sir?”
“Antica sent me to see you.” The captain had shaved and was wearing his uniform. “Captain John McVicars. I’m looking to purchase a lady’s watch.”
Mattiuzzi pulled a velvet tray out of the display case. Two gold watches, one with a leather band, the other with a combination of leather and metal, were placed on the glass. They were the last two pieces of value in the shop. Mattiuzzi planned to put the watches on his arm in case of any emergency.
“She’s a different sort of girl. I see these wristwatches on every other woman in Glasgow. Don’t get me wrong, they’re lovely. But I want something memorable.”
“What sort of a gift is this?”
“A special one.”
“Tell me about her.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Good for you.”
“Yes. And she’s a nurse.”
“Your instinct to buy her a watch is a good one. She needs a watch fob. All the nurses wear them. I have one that I refurbished that’s available for sale. But it’s expensive. It’s an antique. One of a kind. Would you like to see it?”
McVicars nodded. Mattiuzzi went to the back room and returned with the watch fob. His plan was to have a middleman sell the piece on commission, in case Mattiuzzi needed cash later.
“Why is the face upside down?” McVicars asked as he studied it.
“A nurse needs a timepiece she can read at a glance without having to move her wrist to check the time. There’s a second hand. It’s jeweled movement, which means it tells time exactly—it is never off by a second. Important when taking a pulse.”
“I like the stone.”
“You’ll never see anything like it in all of Scotland, or the British Isles really.”
“Would you engrave it?”
Mattiuzzi looked back at his son. The engraving pen and plate had already been packed. Piccolo shook his head no.
“I’m sorry, sir, we are not able to engrave it.”
“It needs to be engraved. I would like it to say, Domenica and John. I came to you because she’s Italian. I figured you would do your best for her.”
“Is she in Italy now?”
“No, sir, she is thankfully working here in Scotland at the convent in Dumbarton.”
Mattiuzzi thought to warn the man that his future fiancée could be in danger. An Italian national in Scotland was not safe from accusations of the fifth column. But Mattiuzzi couldn’t be certain the captain wasn’t on a fishing expedition to find out how much the Italian Scots knew about the potential roundup. As for the recommendation from Antica, the ice cream peddler knew everyone—that was hardly a ringing endorsement. Mattiuzzi kept quiet.