My God! the impossible! “Ello lads.” It’s her! It’s our Gracie! I wished it was theirs. She insists we come and have a ‘nice cup of tea’. Down the lanes she takes us to her Villa Canzone del t’mare; the view is stunning but the house is rather like a very good class boarding-house in Scunthorpe. She’s wonderfully warm-hearted. We sit on the balcony admiring the view; please God, don’t let her sing. Is she going to say it? She does. “Ee Bai Gom, a bit different from Blackpool.” She must be working from a script. We escape without any singing. “Good luck lads, give my love t’folks back t’ome.” We’d escaped! Not even ‘Sally’!
I wanted to see San Michele. It’s closed, says a caretaker who looked like Frankenstein’s monster without the bolts. On to the site of the Villa of Tiberius, now carefully converted into cowsheds. Sloshing thru’ cow dung, a local shows where Tiberius threw his victims over the cliff.
“I don’t see what’s dangerous about that,” said Bornheim. “It’s perfectly safe until you hit the rocks.”
Lunch, midday and that warm torpor was implemented as we ate Spaghetti Marinara and drank Ruffino at a little restaurant, high over the sea.
Me after the meal, well fed and pissed. Observe geranium.
As I write this nearly forty years later, I can still feel the warmth of that day; that one day can cast such a lasting spell speaks either for my appreciation of life, or that ancient Capri was indeed as charged with such beauty that it left itself tattooed on your mind, soul and spirit. I know I was quite a simple soldier, unsophisticated, but as I grew older, my mind took up the slack of that past time and computed it into a finely honed memory, leaving every colour, taste, sound and sight as crisp and as electric as though it happened yesterday; and to me as I write, it did.
I remember a potted geranium on the wall. I wonder if it remembers me. It’s scarlet luminescence, projected against a fibrillating azure sea, seemed to hypnotize me. Like all idiots with a camera, I had to photograph it, and like all dodos who think they can capture their emotions on a holiday snap, I took a colour picture, in black and white…
The world’s first colour photograph in black and white
I must be Irish. Well, I was that day.
“It’s the colour of the sea,” said Bornheim, equally pissed.
“What about the colour?” I’m asking.
“It looks as if it’s been painted,” he said, staring into its calling waters. “It has been,” I said.
“Who was he?” said Bornheim, stressing every word. That geranium, it was becoming fluorescent: I think it was doing to me what the chair did to Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception. I was understanding why Van Gough painted that simple chair in Aries — people say he created his own mescalin. What a saving! I sat on the wall and looked towards the Capri headland and envisaged the marble palace of Tiberius that once adorned it. That a man so innately evil should have lived in such beauty; poor Mallonia killing herself (“that filthy-mouthed, hairy stinking old man”) to avoid his advances. (He should have gone out with Maria -he’d have been dead in a day.) Now all that rage had passed, all was emptiness with the wheeling sea birds, the wash of the hissing seas.
We returned as the evening purple cascaded down on the Sorrentine peninsula.
The ferry is cloyed with chattering screaming Neapolitans and flies. At the stern a row breaks out. I can only see the pictures of a crowd of males hitting one unfortunate individual, some actually hanging over the boat railings to give better purchase for their assault. As in all mobs, anyone can join in the hitting, even though they don’t know the reason for it, and even I was tempted. It’s the last boat, crowded. We are the only two soldiers on board. I address a seaman: “Hello sailor,” I say. “Can you take our picture?” Si. The sailor smiles and points the ancient Kodak. Click! Bornheim and I are immortalized.
The cool evening air and the last warmth of the sun touched our skin. We stood at the rails watching Capri sink into the oncoming crepuscular night; in ancient times the Pharos on Capri would have been igniting its faggot fires to warn ships bearing grain from Africa of its rocky prominence. Bornheim and I were taking on glasses of grappa to light our own faggot fires, and warn those self-same ships against our own rocky prominences. Arriving back at the billets and settling back into the ways of soldiery was difficult. After lights out, we reminisced in our khaki cots. “It didn’t really happen, did it?” he said.
Bombardier Milligan, a moment before looking the other way
Me telling Bornheim where my hand has gone.
Last shot of Capri before we head for home
Nearly!
These were the days when we should have been lotus-eating but the NAAFI didn’t stock them. Life was a series of paid gigs. The Bill Hall Trio, with Bornheim on piano and George Puttock on Drums, plays for dances in, around, and sometimes under Naples. Every band in those days had to have an MC. Ours won his at El Alamein. He was Sergeant Bob Hope, yes, Bob Hope. What a letdown when he showed up.
“You’re not Bob Hope?”
“Oh yes I am.”
“You don’t look like Bob Hope.” . “Well, I bloody well am Bob Hope.”
“Not the Bob Hope.”
“No — a Bob Hope.”
We finally got him to use ‘Dick’ Hope. Dick or Bob, he nearly did for us.
We are in a van returning from a successful gig at the Royal Palace at Caserta, a dead straight road that leads to Naples. There are no lights. Bill Hall is counting and recounting his money, hoping to make it more. He’s turning it over for the tenth time.
“You keeping it aired,” says Mulgrew who’s got his in a sealed Scottish death grip in his right hand.
Bornheim’s lighter illuminates his face; he tries to set fire to Hall’s money.
“Wot you bloody doin?” says Hall, beating out the flames.
I’m looking through the windscreen from my bench seat; ahead are two lone sets of car lights; I can tell by their excessive brightness they’re American. They are approaching at speed. I have a nasty feeling. The lights are swaying. In no time the car is on us. It veers across to our side. The idiot Dick Hope is rooted to the wheel. I lunge over his shoulder and wrench the steering wheel to the left. As I do so, the uncoming vehicle hits us, there’s a screech of metal, it rips the whole of our undercarriage out, our four wheels are hulled from under us and our bodywork crashes to the road. We skid along on the chassis, the road coming up through the floor. We grind to a halt.
“Everyone alright?” shouts Bornheim.
“99, 100,” says Hall, counting his money.
We kick open the rear door and scramble out. The first thing is the unending blare of a motor horn coming from the other vehicle, a banshee sound. It’s an American Pontiac staff car, nose deep in a ten-foot ditch. In the dark we slither down. The driver is impaled on the steering column shorting the horn. His eyes have been jettisoned on his cheeks. Dead. We unstick him. In the rear are a colonel and wife/lady/screw. She was unconscious and saying “O! O! O!” A lot of help — didn’t she know any other letters? I drag her out; she’s mumbling “Are you OK, honey?” I said yes, I was honey. Her top half is naked, her dress hanging down from the waist. The colonel is unconscious, his trousers are around his ankles. What I wouldn’t have given for a hot line to the News of the World! I drag her up the bank. The other three pull the colonel out.
“I think the driver’s dead,” says Bill Hall — it must be a second opinion. On the road I help the bird get her boobs back into her dress, give them a squeeze and ask would she like a quickie. The colonel is gaining consciousness and saying ‘Darling, you were wonderful’ to Bill Hall, who agrees with him. An American Police Patrol jeep screeches to a halt. They leave one policeman and the other speeds off for help — he will ‘alert the British Military Police’. In no time the whole mess is cleaned up, the ambulance whisks off the colonel, the lady and the dead driver. A giant crane lifts the wreck away and whoosh! all gone. All that’s left are the six British idiots, alone in
the dark with the top half of a van. “Let’s play look for the wheels,” says George Puttock.
We are waiting for the ‘Alert British Police’ — one hour, two hours, three hours — shall we start walking? No, we should have started walking hours ago. It’s gone four o’clock. Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Prince Albert had also gone, everyone had gone but us. As morning in a bowl of light was putting the stars to flight, a fifteen-cwt truck with two Military Police arrives, followed by an ambulance. My first words were: “Where the fuck have you been?” A tall red cap cautions me. “Now, now Corporal,” he warned, “that kind of language won’t get us anywhere.” Oh, would he like it in fucking French then? He was not endeared to me.
“Where are the injured?” he said.
We are the fucking injured, I said, but we’re all better now.
“We were told that your driver was dead.”
Oh? We didn’t know that, otherwise we would never have let him drive.
Enough is enough. We get into the fifteen-cwt and as the sun was rising, drive down the Royal road to Naples.
“Two hundred, three hundred,” Bill Hall is recounting his money. Another foot and that car would have killed us. “Three hundred and twenty…”
Nice Surprisey-Poo
You are very lucky fellows,” says Reg O’List, who is now not singing ‘Begin the Beguine’. Why are we lucky fellows? We have been chosen to appear on the bill of the Finale of the Festival of Arts. This turns out to be nothing more nor less than a Military ‘Opportunity Knocks’ and, after all the contestants have done, while the summing up is going on, there is to be entertainment by the ‘professionals’. Any extra money? No. Sod. OK, the Pros are Stan Bradbury, a song-plugger from the UK, the Polish Ballet, ourselves and HELLLLLPPPPPP Gracie Fields and her singing! It’s too late now, we’ve said yes and they’ve aired the beds.
“You’ll only be there for forty-eight hours,” said Lieutenant, O’List. That would be long enough for me to carry out my solemn promise to Maria Marini that I would come back and marry her from the waist down.
“Grade Fields,” said Bill Hall, like he’s announcing the Doppelgänger.
“Don’t worry,” says Reg O’List, “I’ve put you on before her, so if you hurry up you can be out in the street before she starts singing. I’ll try and keep the theatre doors shut so that the sound doesn’t get out.”
Secombe, he’s coming too, it’s about time he came too. Is he going to fill the stage with soap? No. “I’m on the spotlights,” he says, through his chattering, screaming and farting. Secombe on the spotlights?? That’s like putting a man with epilepsy on a tightrope. Secombe can’t keep still, he can’t concentrate on anything except screaming, shaving and farting. We’ll see. “I’ve been specially chosen to put the spotlight on Gracie Fields in ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’,” he says, like the Captain of the Titanic.
Yet again, the charabanc takes the chosen to the Holy City. This time it’s just the Trio, Secombe, and a few spare wanks who will do ‘odd jobs back stage’. I have no idea what odd jobs back stage are. Massaging curtains back to life? Mud-wrestling with electricians?
It’s the old Albergo Universo, and our lesbian javelin-throwing manager with her fifty-six-inch chest. Can we visit her for a drink after the show? Yes. Have we any free seats? Yes, how many does she want? Seventy-three. She settles for six.
Friday March 1st. We sit in the stalls, watching the amateurs rehearsing for the finals. They are being ‘produced’ by Major Murray Leslie, Royal Army Service Corps, an ideal corps to produce theatricals. A short dark singer is going through ‘Just a song at twilight’. We all know the joke about the short man who looks as though he’s been hit by a lift: well, this is the bloke, he’s been hit by one from above and another one coming up underneath. He has a good voice, but looks like a semi-straightened-out Quasimodo, and worse, he has ape-like arms. Major Leslie suggests that when the song reaches the climax he raises his arms gradually; they look like two anti-aircraft guns being raised to fire. But there you are. He finishes his song with arms raised. Major Leslie RASC waits a while and says, “No, no, don’t keep them up there.”
A woeful series of acts follows. The blond guardsman who. recited Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’. For this Major Leslie also suggested the use of the arms, but this time they were raised alternately on ‘certain words’.
I wandered lonely as a cloud (right arm up)
That floats on high o’er vales and hills (left arm up)
When all at once I saw a crowd (right leg up?)
– and so on. Comes the night, and the hopefuls go through their paces. They get what we would call sympathetic applause, i.e. bugger all. We stand in the wings watching, and keeping an eye out for ‘Ow do lads, ee bai gum.’ The interval, and the judging goes on. Stan Bradbury ‘entertains’ at the piano. Why I don’t know. A very amiable man, well-loved in the music profession, but an entertainer, no. All the while he played, the audience thought he was the warm-up pianist for a forthcoming singer who never materialized. Now, a last-minute change! The Polish Ballet are playing up and are to go on before us; the girls are beautiful, the boys more so; it’s a stunning dance company with the full orchestra conducted by Raymond Agoult.
“And now,” it’s the announcer Philip Slessor announcing an announcement, “from the Central Pool of Artists, the Bill Hall —”
Before he could get the words out there was a roar from the crowd. We can do no wrong, a smash hit again. The encores keep Gracie Fields trapped in the wings. We take five curtain calls, and then the orchestra plays ‘Sally’. On come Gracie, and by the great wave of applause one realizes that none of them have ever heard her Royal Palace NAAFI Naples singing sessions. But disaster lurks for poor Gracie: Gunner Secombe is now poised on the spotlight. He has been told to put the Red Jelly in for when she sings ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. Secombe is myopic: he walks into walls, over cliffs and under streamrollers and in recent years crashed into walls in horse-drawn coaches. In the dark he juggles with the jellies; Miss Fields goes rapturously into ‘Red Sails’ only to turn green.
“You’re going mouldy, Gracie,” shouts a wag. The audience dissolves into tears. Gracie handles it well.
“Sum wun up there don’t like me,” she says. Secombe realizes the error and soon Miss Fields is a bright purple, yellow and then orange. Finally someone brings him down with a rugby tackle and before he can do any more damage, he’s carried out screaming, shaving and farting.
During our act, we have been spotted by an impresario in the Judges’ Box who sends us a note promising untold riches in the future.
The note that promised us work in England (original in the British Museum)
After the show we are all presented to Miss Fields. “Ow do lads,” she says. “Ee, I could do with a nice cup o’ tea.” She says she “looved our act and would we like a nice cup o’ tea?”
Captain Reg O’List wants us to have dinner with him again. He treats Us to a horse-drawn — “Mean bugger won’t pay for a taxi,” says Hall — again it’s spaghetti and wine, and again he will sing ‘Begin the Beguine’. I can see by the look in Bill Hall’s eyes he fears Reg O’List could become the male Gracie Fields. As the evening goes on, he does, Hall is leaving. “We got to leave for Naples at nine, Reg.” Too late — Reg O’List has already become Gracie Fields and is singing ‘Begin the Beguine’.
ISCHIA
Ischia
March 1946. Our cleaning ladies consisted of pretty young Italian things, all on the lookout for potential husbands to take them to Inghilterra. Bornheim and I are pursued by two Marias. (All cleaners in twos are called Marias in Italy.) My Maria I used for laundry, sock repairs and groping.
We decided to take the girls to Ischia as a repayment for squeezing them. When we told them, they shrieked with excitement. No, they’d never been out of Napoli, was there somewhere else? They’d certainly never been to Ischia.
On the Sunday, they turned up carrying raffia baskets full of home-
cooked Neapolitan goodies. The ferry was crammed, the noise of their chattering drowning out the engines. Forty minutes and we are there; I try my luck and take us to the Colonel Startling Grope Villa of yore.
Yes, the manservant remembers me of yore — Can we use the private beach? Er — yes. The ‘yes’ is good, the ‘er’ is worrying. We disport ourselves and are soon immersed in the sparkling waters. The girls are delirious. Maria I, who is mine, I had only seen in her scruffy working clothes, but now, in her black one-piece bathing costume she is very very dishy and ready to be squongled, and it can’t be long now. The girls open the ‘hamper’. In half an hour we put on a stone and sink like one. Oh, Neapolitan cooking! We must see the Grotto Azura, says a plying prying boatman. We argue the price and then he rows us to the enchanted hole in the cliff. We enter with our heads ducked and lo, a wonderous luminescent cavern, flickering with diaphanous sunshine on the cavern wall; by a trick of the light we appear to be floating on air. I dive over the side and give an underwater cabaret, in which I look as if I am suspended in air under the boat. It’s all wondrous, the girls squeal with delight that echoes round the cavern. Out again into the white sunlight and back to the beach. On dark winter nights I recall that day — the clock should have stopped there. Our ‘yes’ has run out and the ‘er’ I was worried about is operating. Er — would we leave now as the owner is returning from Naples where he has been selling packets of sawdust.
We caught the last ferry as twilight fell across the Bay of Naples; pimples of light are starting to appear on the shore. A thousand shouts as we draw to the quay, brown hands grasp the ropes and affix them to rusting bollards. We hire an ancient Fiat taxi that looks like a grave on wheels. It chugs and rattles its way up the slopes of the Vomero. “Qui, qui, ferma qui,” shout the girls. In the dark there’s a brief kissing. We are waving the girls goodbye, when Kerash!! from nowhere a drunk appears and punches through the taxi window.