Memoirs 06 - Peace Work

  Our first night had a very mixed audience: Americans, Russians, British, Austrians. The Russians are in a box and we are chuffed when they laugh uproariously at the Trio.

  “If nothing else,” says Mulgrew, “they’ve got a sense of humour.”

  “Sense of humour?” said Hall. “Have you read what they did to the women when they captured Berlin? Very funny.”

  “They weren’t the only ones,” said Mulgrew. “I’ve seen some of our squaddies and GI’s behaving pretty abominable.”

  “You sayin’ we’re as bad as the Russians?”

  “Given the opportunity, yes.”

  “Listen, they raped everything from schoolgirls to grandmothers.”

  “Listen, mate. Some of the grandmothers were very grateful,” said Mulgrew with a sadistic chuckle.

  These Hall vs. Mulgrew arguments never got anywhere; both were implacable. Their arguments ranged from who should turn out the light when neither bed was more than three paces from the switch, to why the Conservatives had lost the post-war election.

  “Churchill was going gaga, that’s why,” insisted Hall.

  “Rubbish,” retorts Mulgrew. “He’s in his prime. Attlee has the personality of an overlaundered vest.”

  ∗

  Next day, Toni and I set out to see the sights. Toni has a small booklet in Italian telling what to see. Under her guidance, we visit Kartnerstrasse. Helpppppppp!!! It’s the most expensive shopping centre in Austria, and me down to my last few schillings! Helpppppppp!!

  She stops at a window with a magnificent tulle white wedding dress. “Oh, Terr-ee – look, how beautiful!”

  “I couldn’t wear it,” I said. “It’s the wrong colour.” It was another one of my jokes that didn’t register. If there was a graveyard for failed jokes, it would be overflowing with mine.

  A JOKE MORTICIAN’S SHOP.

  ME:

  I’ve come to bury a joke.

  MORTICIAN:

  I’m sorry, sir, the graveyard is full. It’s been a good year.

  ME:

  What do you suggest?

  MORTICIAN:

  Cremation, sir. You can have the ashes of your favourite joke in an urn. In moments of depression, you can take the lid off and have a good laugh.

  After miles of shops, we repair to a coffee house. “Schwi tass Kaffee, bitte,” I say in badly spelt German.

  The place is crowded with people leaning forward and speaking in hushed tones, looking like trainee Balkan assassins. “I like very much Vienna,” says Toni. “I very hapee.” (I’m trying to spell like she talks.) The coffee arrives along with a cake only the Austrians can make, called Sachertorte – light as a feather, full of pure cream and caster sugar, topped with milk chocolate. With a balletic thumb and forefinger, Toni eats one with mincing mouth movements. I’ve crammed two, three into my mouth.

  “You like Vienna, Terr-ee?”

  “Yes, anytime is dancing time with you. But for drongles on the knees, we’d be waltzing now.”

  “I no understand.”

  MORTICIAN:

  I’m sorry, sir. I told you, the graveyard is full.

  Next stop, the Spanish Riding School. I’ve always wanted to see Spaniards riding – something that’s very hard to come by in Brockley SE26. In a moment of transportation madness, I decide we should take a horse-drawn landau. I tell the driver, “Mein Herr, Spanish riding school verstain?” He is not verstaining. I demonstrate and mime several well-known dressage movements. I prance back and forth. He still doesn’t verstain. A small crowd gathers, thinking it is street entertainment. Then I remember – like Paul on the way to Damascus, I see the light. I remember the breed of the white horse.

  “Lippizaner, verstain?”

  A smile of recognition lights up a face that is nearly falling off. “Ja, verstehe,” he says, and we are on our clip-clop way.

  Ah, driving through Vienna in a landau! How romantic, and how unromantic when the horse starts letting off. I am embarrassed; Toni is less self-conscious. She starts to giggle. How can she? We are down wind and getting the lot. Thank God, it’s only a short distance. We pay the entrance fee and enter the famous place – very impressive with its white viewing galleries and forty-six columns. When did the horses come? When we are old we will remember this. Yes, where are the Lippizaner horses? “Zorry, mein Herr. Zer Lippizaners do not appear in August. Zo sorry.” Good God, this was like early closing in Catford.

  It’s time to go home. I flag down a well-worn Mercedes taxi. We flop in and Toni says, “Oh, I am soo tir-ed.” She slips off her shoes. I slide my arm round her and we explode in a long hot, passionate kiss. After that silence, what else? You can’t say ‘Thank you, madam. I’ll be round tomorrow for the same. Here’s a receipt.’ There should be a light on all lovers that lights up when you reach breaking point. When it started to flash, you would know it was time to have it away.

  ∗

  The second night at the theatre, it’s only half full. Still, that’s a thousand; but there’s something about masses of empty seats that lowers your morale. There is a sepulchral echo that makes us sound like we’re doing a show in the Swiss Alps. However, the show is well received and afterwards we have to meet a Brigadier Fullwood and his retinue. He pumps my hand.

  “Jolly good show. What part did you play?”

  “I was in the Bill Hall Trio.”

  “Oh yes, you played the banjo?”

  “Yes, I play de banjo.”

  “Are you a serving soldier?”

  “Was. I’m now a serving civilian.”

  One of his subalterns invites us to his party. “Just round the corner from here,” he says.

  Toni doesn’t want to come. “I tired,” she says.

  The party is in the top floor of a block of prestige flats. This subaltern has it made, has got the lot – including a lovely Austrian mistress. “I’d love to be in her class,” says Bornheim, making an appropriate sign. There’s plenty to eat and drink. I am chatted up by a blonde Marlene Dietrich.

  “Vy,” she says with heavily lidded eyes, “vy are you not in zer uniform?”

  “I’m not a soldier.”

  “Oh, have you been in zer war?”

  “Yes, I was with the artillery.”

  “Ah, gut.” She draws longingly on a cigarette. “Have you ever killed einer Mauri?”

  “No.”

  “No one?”

  “Well, I didn’t fire the gun. I only gave the orders, I suppose. OK, yes, maybe I have killed some men.”

  This seemed to cheer her up. “So you haff drawn blood, ja?”

  “Yes, I drew a pint every day from the stores for my Dracula impressions.”

  “Please?”

  MORTICIAN:

  I keep telling you sir, the graveyard’s full.

  She must have been a recruiting agent for the SS. Anyhow, she’s taken to me and I get sloshed. People are leaving; not me, I get more sloshed. Wait, the place is empty. Mein host and his bird have gone to bed. “Sit here,” says Marlene, patting the seat. The inevitable happened, I screwed her. I can’t get out – the door is locked. I have to wake mein host for the key. I leave as the blonde temptress says, “Gude night, soldier boy,” before she turned into a werewolf.

  Comes the dawn! Toni suspects. She knows I stayed last night with a WOMAN, I can’t get away with it. Being a Catholic, I confess the whole story. I feel better, she feels worse. She bursts into tears. “I never talk to you again.” I tell her it’s because I got drunk. That’s even worse, drunk and screwing. She runs to her room and won’t answer the door. She wouldn’t even answer the windows. Soon, it’s common gossip among the cast. “Cattivo, ”’ says Tiola Silenzi.

  “So you ‘ad a shag,” says Hall, tuning his violin. “Wots she worried about? There’s worse things in life.”

  “Why did you tell her?” says Mulgrew, lying back on his bed smoking a dog end.

  “I had to. I’m a compulsive confessor.”

  “There’s no future for
you,” chuckles Hall. “You’re going to go short.”

  “What was it like?” says Mulgrew.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Oh, my! All that banging away with the sweat rolling off yer balls and you can’t remember,” says Hall, and launches into playing ‘Sweetheart, Sweetheart’.

  He waltzes round the room to his own accompaniment. He’s taking the piss out of me, I feel like a leper. Where will I get one at this time of night? Oh, Toni, Toni, what have I done? Rather, it’s who have I done. Verily, I suffereth and there is a gnashing of teeth. Woe to me and Milligan is downcast and sacrificeth a lamb to the gods of pity and, lo, he layeth on his bed and smoketh a cigarette. But it easeth him not and he is sore afraid. Someone knocking on my door; it must be the Doppelgänger.

  “Go away.”

  “It’s me, Toni.” I don’t believe it. I leap and open the door. “Can I come in?”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes, Toni. Come in.” Come in, Toni. Yes, Toni, yes – you want to talk to me? Oh, yes, Toni anything you say. She is unbelievable.

  “I come to ask you if you really sorry what you do.”

  I tell her I am ashamed for what I did, but it was only because I got drunk. I still love her; I will never do it again, I swear. She pauses – the silence is unbearable. She walks to the window.

  With her back to me, she says, “All right, I forgive you and we forget all about it.” Of course, I’ll forget all about it. Yes, yes, yes, Toni. We kiss and everything falls back into place. What a relief I can cancel the sackcloth and ashes. It’s mid-morning, would I like to go out and see the Schonbrunn Palace? Yes, yes, yes, Toni – the Schonbrunn Palace, the very place I wanted to visit. No patched-up romance is complete without a Schonbrunn Palace. OK, she’ll see me downstairs in half an hour. Yes, yes, half an hour, that’s exactly what I would have said – half an hour, yes, Toni.

  The setting was perfect for Toni and me. The Schonbrunn was such a romantic delight. Here Maria Theresa lived in her ‘idyllic absolutism’. Here, in the Chinesisches Rund-kabinett, Mozart gave his first concert. The ballroom is baroque to the point of madness; it was a visit to this deserted ballroom that inspired Ravel’s fantasy ‘La Valse’, or so I was told. He might not have been inspired by the ballroom – no, he could have been inspired by his charlady hoovering the floor or a number 79a tram. There’s no telling.

  “What wonderful life they live here,” said Toni as we walked through the Hall of Mirrors or, in German, ‘Spiegelsaal’. We were spiegelling ourselves in the mirrors and seeing ourselves reflected into numberless infinity. There were a thousand Spike Milligans and a thousand Tonis. She did a pirouette to see the effect of a myriad of ballerinas; not to be outdone, I did the same, jerking my hand up and down above my head. It was simple fun and very economical. I only stopped it when I realized one of the uniformed attendants was watching me. I gave him a grin and he grinned back – again, simple fun and very economical. I really am over the moon now that Toni has forgiven me. What a forgiving nature she had.

  On, then, to the room that Napoleon occupied on his way to the Battle of Austerlitz. I didn’t know the Hapsburgs rented out rooms! It’s sad: this is the room that Napoleon’s son died in. Had he seen the bill? The room contains his death mask and a stuffed pet bird. It has a pained expression as though it was stuffed before death. The evening hour grows late. While Viennese hurry home from work, we are going the other way – to work.

  ∗

  Bornheim had been at the fatal party. That evening, during the course of the show, he approaches me.

  “You been having it away behind Toni’s back? Well, well! Was it the good-looking one I saw you chatting up?”

  “The same.”

  “Cor, you must have enjoyed it.”

  I round on him. “Look here, Bornheim, I’ve had enough.”

  “Oh, we know that,” he interrupted.

  “I have no wish to discuss it further, it’s over and done.”

  “And you were the one that done it,” he laughs.

  Please, God, stop the torture. Please, drop a vengeful Catholic mangle on Bornheim. I suppose now we are all a bit bored with the show and a bit blase over its continuing success – there is never a night when we don’t get an ovation. That’s something you don’t get tired of, applause.

  That night, Toni and I are locked in each other’s arms. I stay in her room all night. Still, that guilty Roman Catholic plagues me: should I be doing this to her????? I can still hear my mother’s voice on the landing. “Terry, where have you been at this time of night? It’s one o’clock…”

  Next morning I sneak out of her room, unobserved by the cast, back to my bath. After a bath and a vigorous shower, I meet Toni downstairs where we breakfast on fresh warm brioches with jam and tea. By now, of course, I only drink Russian tea.

  Toni lays a hand on mine. “Last night very beautiful,” she says, giving me a long steady gaze. I nod.

  Tiola Silenzi, looking pneumatic, bears down on us. “Ah,” she says, “insieme ancora. Che canno?” She smiles wickedly and wags a finger. God how the Italians love intrigue. Her husband Fulvio stands dwarfed behind her and nods in agreement to avoid assassination.

  This morning is payday. The ghost walks, but not fast enough for me. It’s in Lieutenant Priest’s room, I sign for my hundred schillings and enjoy tucking the note inside my jacket. Today, Toni and I will ride the giant Ferris wheel! It’s a short taxi ride. There it is, towering above us. We take our positions in the boxed cars; soon we are riding up and around, giving one an exhilarating feeling as one feels one’s stomach come up into one’s throat. “Oh Terr-ee,” screams Toni as the wheel gathers speed. I put my arm around her and hold her tight. Enjoyment isn’t the word; it’s a feeling of secure fear (Eh?). Gradually it slows down and we emerge feeling slightly lightheaded.

  Back at the hotel, it’s NAAFI issue in Molloy’s room. I draw my fifty free cigarettes in the vacuum-packed tin. I like piercing the tin seal with the opening prong in the lid and the hiss of escaping air brings the smell of tobacco. I lay on my bed eating my chocolate ration and smoking; life was good. Both Mulgrew and Bornheim visit to repay borrowed cigarettes.

  That night, the most embarrassing night of my life, the act ends with my trousers falling down. OK, I hear you say, what’s embarrassing about that? This night we arrive at the end of the act, I pull the string that drops my trousers – down they go. Then came the moment of truth: I had forgotten my underpants! My shirt just covered my willy, but people standing in the wings can see the lot. Two of the ballet girls, Luciana and Marisa call out, “Bravo, Terr-ee, che bellino” (well done, what a beauty) and who was I to disagree with experts? However, it was a near-run thing. That night Toni, Mulgrew, Bornheim and I dine together. It’s Bornheim’s birthday. He splashes out on a bottle of champagne. It’s Austrian – called Schlocknut, which sounds like part of a diesel engine and almost tastes like it.

  “Don’t you like it?” he inquires.

  “Not much, it’s too dry for me.” Ugh, it has almost sucked my cheeks together.

  How old is he now? Can we guess? He gets a selection: twenty-nine? twenty-six? twenty-seven? No, no, no, all wrong. One more guess – sixty? Silly bugger, Milligan, no. “I am this day twenty-five.” We wish him bon voyage on his journey through life as a furrier in Leeds. What more can a man want of life?

  We eat our dinner to the accompaniment of the quintet who are playing, as usual, waltzes. Bornheim orders another bottle of the diesel oil, then another, and I notice that Toni is getting squiffy. She is giggling into her food and missing her mouth. Enough is enough, I beg Bornheim not to give her any more.

  “Just because you’re falling behind, there’s no need to persecute this poor girl.”

  “Don’t you listen to him, Toni,” says Mulgrew, who is himself starling to slur his words.

  The evening ended with me helping her to her room a giggling female who was very unsteady on her feet. I retire to my room, where I’m suddenly aw
akened from a deep sleep by Mulgrew and Bornheim. Both are smashed out of their minds.

  “Schpike, S C H P I K E! Cwan on hev a drink he he he he,” says Mulgrew trying to make me drink from his glass.

  “Schjust hev hay liddle schippy poos,” says Bornheim standing or rather swaying behind him. I have to get up and gradually push the unintelligible lunatics out into the corridor, where I hear them stumbling along talking gibberish. What made it amazing was that they seemed to understand each other!! How I envied them in that blissful state.

  Next morning, both Bornheim and Mulgrew are missing. They appear at midday in an Austrian police wagon. They had been found wandering the streets of Vienna and have spent the night pissed in a police cell. Lieutenant Priest has to sign for them to be released from police custody. They are both unshaven, bleary-eyed and, on their release, both take to their beds to sleep it ofT. Toni, too, doesn’t appear until midday. “Oh, Terr-ee, my head go bang, bang.” It’s her own fault. I had warned her, I had tried to stop her. “I am very soree,” she says. We sit in the lounge and have coffee. “Oh, why, why I drink champagne?”

  “It’s too late now, my dear, and remember in your condition I could have taken advantage of you and had a ‘quickie’.” As it was, I had only given them a quick squeeze.

  Does she feel fit enough to go out? Yes, she thinks so. I want to see the Stephensdom (St Stephen’s). We go, again, by horse-drawn landau – known here as a fiacre. The driver, a young man wearing a bowler, is the essence of politeness; he bows as he helps Toni in and clicks his heels. The building dominates the skyline as yet unsullied by tall buildings; its Romanesque western façade and Gothic tower loom above us. Fool, I’ve left my money behind. Never mind, Toni has some. She opens her handbag stuffed with schillings, the little miser!

  The building is a marvellous example of the Viennese genius for harmonious compromise. We slog up the steps to the North Tower and are rewarded with what feels like a heart attack and a wonderful view of the city, as well as the huge Pummerin Bell cast from melted-down Turkish cannons captured in the great siege of 1683. It would take pages to describe; let’s say it was a masterpiece of Gothic creativity. We have nothing like it in Brockley SE26 except St Cyprian’s breeze-block church hall.