Sowerbutt's Friend

Bernie White put the kettle on in the back of the shop. He was treated as a local, despite being born Benedetti Bianchi in Milan a couple of years before the Kingdom of Italy joined the Allies in the Great War. He had jumped ship from MS Augustus, Italy’s floating cruise palace, in Gibraltar in 1933 to escape an angry husband. Ending up at the East India Docks, he took on a new British identity with the help of Sowerbutt.

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