Memoirs 06 - Peace Work

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  First night at the Teatro Argentina: very good show and a great first-night audience. Feel very good, feel lively, feel Toni. I’m healthy with lire, so I ask her if she’d like to go out to dinner. Yes, she knows a place I would like. Great. We grab a taxi with a driver who sings all the way, badly. The restaurant is the Trattoria San Carlo. It is small, bustling with waiters and pretty full. Nevertheless, we get a table in a corner near the resident accordion player. He plays, very sostenuto, Italian favourites.

  “Che desidera signore?” says an allegro waiter.

  I’m desperate for a drink to bring me down from my post-show ‘high’. “Una bottiglia di Orvieto abboccata, perfavore,” I say in ill-pronounced Italian.

  It’s to be a lovey-dovey evening. It’s difficult for us two to be alone like this; now we are, and it’s beautiful.

  “You lak it here, Terr-ee?”

  Yes, si, si, it’s lovely and you are lovelier.

  We spend a lot of time looking at each other. I won’t try to describe the feeling in detail, but it caused vibration of the Swonnicles. Allegro waiter pours the wine. Toni and I touch glasses. All is sweetness and light. As I spill some down my shirt, in a flash the allegro waiter is at my side with a napkin. Toni giggles as he helps me mop up. We sit drinking, enjoying the music and the ambience. At this time of night Rome comes alive and takes you with it.

  Time to order: I’m a sucker for it, spaghetti Neapolitan please! Chicken à la romane for Toni. This latter is baked in clay, the mould broken open at your table. “You try,” she says, passing a piece on her fork. Mmmmm, delicious, but it can’t seduce me from my spaghetti. Paradise would be to be buried under a mound of spaghetti, having to eat my way out. Toni complains, “You eat much food but you never get like fat.” Who do I take after, my mother or father? For piles, I take after my father; for thinness, it’s my mother. My mother has legs thinner than Gandhi. If my mother stands with her legs together, it looks like one normal leg.

  I’ve had four glasses of wine and am feeling good. God, I fancy Toni like mad. Oh, for a room at the Grand, Brighton! I tell Toni, “I want you very much.”

  She gives a small understanding smile, which doesn’t give any relief. “Not possible, Terr-ee.”

  There is the last resort, a secret knee-trembler – but no, I couldn’t introduce her to that. That was for taller women. Of course, there was always the orange box. No! These were all sexual fantasies. I don’t want the evening to end, but end it does and we take a taxi back to Albergo Universo. It’s one o’clock. “Good morning,” I say, as I kiss her goodnight.

  Mulgrew is still awake. “Did you get it?”

  “Oh, Mulgrew, must you?”

  “Yes, I must keep a check on the state of play.”

  I undress, still with a warm glow from the evening with Toni.

  “You know, I’m a better size for Toni,” says Mulgrew.

  “What do you mean, better size?”

  “I’m the right height.”

  “Height? You haven’t got any, you’re doomed to be a short-arse.”

  “Listen, Napoleon was short.”

  “Napoleon never went short. There was Josephine for a start.”

  “Well, he had to start somewhere.” Mulgrew giggles reflectively. “He must have looked funny with his clothes off.”

  It was a thought. Mind you, most of us look funny with our clothes off.

  “Could he have conducted his battles nude?” said Mulgrew.

  “Not unless he wore his sideways hat.” I pull the covers over me and turn off the light. “Goodnight, Johnny.”

  Another day in my life had ended. It was all going by so quick, but it was in the main very enjoyable. I didn’t know it but these were to be among the most memorable days.

  ∗

  We awake to another sunny Roman morning. We mustn’t waste the day. Johnny and I confer – the zoo, that’s it we’d all go to the zoo. Is Toni interested? I buzz her room. Yes, she’d love to go to the zoo. She loves me and my beautiful eyes and can Luciana come to? Why, is she unconcious? OK then, dopo prima colazione. We all wear our khaki, messing-about clothes. After breakfast we meet in the foyer.

  “Morning, Spike,” says Lieutenant Priest. “Where did you disappear to last night?”

  “Toni and I dined out.”

  “Somewhere nice?”

  “Yes.”

  Then he lost interest. He is phoning CSE HQNapoli. They want to know when I am returning to the UK, as they have to book my passage back. To date, I haven’t made up my mind. I must give them a month’s warning. OK. What’s this noise I hear approaching, screaming, chattering and blowing raspberries? God, it’s Secombe. It’s a new show booking in. In his high-pitched nasal voice, he greets me with a rapid gabble. “Hello Spike, hey ho hupla raspberry.” He dashes off to reception to baffle the receptionist with chattering, screaming and blowing raspberries. Norman Vaughan comes in; he’s with Secombe in a new show. Forty years on, I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the show; neither can Vaughan or Harry Secombe.

  The zoo party assemble. We take a taxi. “Giardino Zoological,” we tell him and we lurch off. The taxi is like someone after a curry, prone to backfiring. At each explosion, we all give out an ‘OH’. The driver is not amused. He crouches over the wheel while we do every bit of twenty-five miles an hour.

  The Rome zoo is set in splendid gardens, with numerous flowerbeds all in summer bloom with a prolificacy of roses that leave a strong bouquet in the summer air. We wander through the cages, watching creatures which have been torn from their native land and imprisoned. In those days my conscience wasn’t as awake as it is today and I enjoyed the sight of wild animals at close range.

  We pass an ice-cream kiosk and buy four cornets, “Quattro gelati”. In a leisurely fashion we stroll, all immersed in licking our ice-creams like schoolkids.

  In the chimpanzee cage, there are about a dozen specimens. We are witness to what Mulgrew finds hysterically-funny. A male chimp is trying to screw a female, but two other jealous males are trying to stop him by hitting him. The chimp continues banging away under a rain of blows. “My God,” says Mulgrew, “I hope I never want it that bad.” The two girls haven’t said anything but are convulsed with laughter, as are other spectators. They don’t write shows like that any more.

  Would anyone like a ride on the Indian elephant? Yes, four of us climb up to the mounting platform and get into the wicker howdah. It seems to sway perilously as the beast moves off. The girls scream with enjoyment. The driver asks Johnny and me to extinguish our cigarettes. I suppose travelling on a non-smoking elephant was a first. The elephant waddles on a circular route; the driver calls out instructions. Mulgrew wants to know how an Indian elephant understands Italian.

  “Sitting on an elephant makes you look taller, Mulgrew.”

  He agrees, he must get one when he gets back to Scotland. He tells me his father once owned an elephant hunting dog. When people inquired how it killed an elephant, he said: “He waits.” What do you mean he waits, they asked. “Well,” he said, “they got to die sometimes.”

  I took a few photographs. Alas, over the passage of time they all got lost, except these two of Mulgrew and Luciana, me and Toni.

  “Ah ha,” says Mulgrew as we reach the boa constrictor cage. “Here’s a good present for mother-in-laws.” Toni shudders at the sight of the thirty-foot-long creature. “Just think,” says Mulgrew, “there’s thirty pairs of shoes there.” It’s feeding-time and the keeper releases a live white rabbit into the cage. Before the grisly meal starts, we move on – into the cool of the aquarium, with its light diffused through the fish tanks.

  “I like this,” says Toni, putting her face close to the glass of the octopus cage. “Ah yes,” she realizes the meaning of the name, “eight leg, yes?” Yes, Toni. Really, it only needs two. The rest are spares, I suppose. We watch as the octopus changes colours – it’s a miracle, and those human eyes! The piranha are being fed! They attack
the food like bullets from a gun. Several attack the same piece of food until it vanishes.

  “Che barbaro,” says Luciana, putting her hand over her mouth.

  In the carp tank, the keeper holds the food above the water line and they take from his hand – some hang on, and are lifted out of the water. “What a turn on,” says Mulgrew.

  So, on through the afternoon. Towards evening we seek relief for aching feet at the restaurant. We sit outside. What would we all like? Cold drink? Yes yes yes, four lemonades please. No no no, Mulgrew wants a red wine. Bacchus to the rescue. The girls chatter away in Italian. “I think we’ve all had enough zoo, don’t you?” says Mulgrew. Yes, agreed, so it’s to the taxi rank and the journey back through rush-hour traffic. The noise! Italian drivers seem to live with their hands on the horn, plus they shout for the most trivial of reasons.

  Luciana and Johnny at the Rome zoo.

  Spike and Toni in the zoological gardens, Rome, where the Pope lives.

  “I should say this is coronary country,” I said.

  “Che signified?” says Luciana. I have to mime a heart attack. “Ah, capito,” she says with a smile.

  It was a bit embarrassing as, during my dramatic mime, the driver was watching me in his driving mirror and must have wondered.

  We arrive, and it’s Mulgrew to pay the fare and he mimes a heart attack. Unlocking his wallet, he pays with money that hasn’t seen the light of day for months. He groans as the driver gives him change, he tips the taxi driver and he groans.

  I return to my room to find a form with a note from Priest. It’s for an application for a British passport which I need for return to the UK. I supposed at the end of this trip we’d call it a day in Italy, like Wednesday. Bill Hall, Johnny Mulgrew and I had discussed it and thought that, with the offer from Astor, the impresario in London and judging by the reaction of troop audiences, fame would soon be ours. But we were living in a cocoon of self-delusion. Italians also liked our act, but they had been denied jazz and were wildy enthusiastic about it now that it was being released into their society. So, then, what were my plans? First I would like to go somewhere alone with Toni for a holiday. The tour was to end in Rome and I was to be transported to Naples to live in the CSE hotel in the Vuomero until my ship sailed. That was as far ahead in my life as I could plan. Secombe, in between screaming, chattering and blowing raspberries, told me he would be released from the services in September when he hoped to audition for the Windmill Theatre in London.

  I fill in the passport form, answer all the boring questions – is your father British, is your mother British, are you British, are your legs British, is your suit British, where was I born, etc., etc., etc. – and return it to Lieutenant Priest. “You’ll need a passport photo,” he says, “one of those that make you look like a criminal.” Don’t they all?

  Tonight is the night Maria Marini is coming. I must be on my guard against her implorations. The show over, she comes backstage and I entertain her and her friend to a glass of wine. She says when I came on first to sing with the quartet, all of us wearing nightshirts, she was able to recognize me by ‘you eyes’ despite my false moustache. What’s this Italian women have about my eyes? I mean, there were other important bits! Do I want to come back to her place? I’m sorry, no. My place, then. I’m sorry, no. I have an eating appointment with a dinner. She is downcast, I try to upcast her. She writes her phone number: can I phone her when I’m free? Si, si, yes, etc. I still have the number in case things get tough.

  The Charabong is waiting. “Come on, Milligan,” says Priest. “We’re waiting for you.”

  I take my seat next to Toni.

  “You see you ladyfriend,” she says in a slightly cool voice.

  “Yes, and we’re just good friends.”

  “You see her again?”

  “No, no.”

  This is followed by a silence, then, “You tell me truth.”

  Of course, the fact she has a beautiful face, lovely boobs, long shapely legs mean absolutely nothing to me, absolutely nothing!

  “What you say to her?”

  “Goodbye!”

  Toni gives me a long cold stare; I realize what I need is a good solicitor. At dinner, she is friendlier. I tell her, “You are the one I love, you understand?”

  Yes, she understands. “But I no like you to see other pretty girl.” I tell her I can’t go around blindfold. She smiles, “All right, but I little gelosa, how you say?”

  “Jealous.”

  “Yes, I jealous.” She eats a few more mouthfuls of food. “But now I all right.”

  Good, the heat is off.

  “Toni, when the show is finish, you like to come on holiday with me on Capri?”

  She is surprised and bemused. “Capri?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me an’ you on Capri?”

  “Yes.”

  She’s never done anything like this before. Neither have I. Yes, but we mustn’t tell her mother. That’s fine as long as she doesn’t tell mine!

  MOTHER: (Or the landing)

  Terry? What time do you call this, where have you been to at this time of night?

  ME:

  The Isle of Capri, Mum.

  Toni is over the moon at the news. The Isle of Capri! She’s never been there. Where will we stay? Don’t worry, I’ll fix a place. I’m going to cash in my Post-war Credits and my Post Office Savings – a grand total of eighty-six pounds!!! Rich as King Creosote!!!! Eighty-six pounds! Why, that was nearly eighty-seven pounds! Me, who had never had more than ten pounds in my hands. Oh, God, was I really that innocent? Yes, I was; why didn’t I stay that way…

  That night I go to bed with my head full of dreams about Capri. I can’t believe that little old me who worked in Woolwich Arsenal dockyard as a semi-skilled fitter, little old me with one fifty-shilling suit, a sports coat and flannels, can afford to go to Capri with an attractive Italian ballerina. Little old me! The furthest I’d been from Brockley was on a school day trip to Hernia Bay on a rainy day! The galling part was I had to thank Adolf Hitler for this dramatic change in my life.

  A CONCENTRATION CAMP IN SIBERIA.

  HITLER IS SHOVELLING SHIT AND SALT.

  HITLER:

  You see? You fools? If you had kept me on zen EVERYONE would be going to Capri, nein?

  Johnny Mulgrew and Johnny Bornheim come into the room. They’ve been drinking at the vino bar next door and are very merry. “Ah, look at the little darling, in bed already,” says Mulgrew. Bornheim has a bottle of red wine which he holds up in front of me with a grin. What the hell! OK, I’ll have a glass. The three of us sit drinking and yarning. All of us are yearning for our tomorrows to mature; we are all suspended in an exciting but unreal life. We realize that this is a post-war world with people still mourning the death of sons and husbands, and we are a band of Merry Andrews with absolutely nothing to worry about. We drink again and again, and get more and more morose.

  “I’m going to bed,” lisps Bornheim, “before I start to cry.”

  Mulgrew takes off trousers and shirt and in a short vest that just covers his wedding tackle, climbs into the pit and, before I am, he is asleep with a long snore in the key of G.

  How do I know? Like my mother I have perfect pitch. Back home, if I dropped a fork on the floor with a clang, my mother would say what key it was in. Apparently, if I remember rightly, I was eating my breakfast in E flat. I drift off into sleep as Mulgrew changes key.

  ∗

  “Ah,” says Mulgrew to the morning, “it’s a beautiful day.”

  “It’s raining,” I say.

  “Ah, yes, but today,” he pauses and sings in a false opera voice. “it’s Payyyyyyyyyy dayyyyyyyyyy.”

  I sing back, “Sooooooo it issssss and if I remember you owe me one thousand lireeeeeeeeeeee.”

  “Ohhhhhhhhhhh, buggerrrrrrrrrrrr.” Mulgrew disappears into the WC. His voice comes wafting, “What’s all this paper on the seat?” I tell him it’s against deadly diseases. I’m sorry I for
got to flush it away – how embarrassing! “What do you think you’re going to catch?” he says, straining to his task.

  “Leprosy, Shankers and the Clap.”

  “The Holy Trinity of Scotland,” he says still straining.

  I leap from my bed in my blue pyjamas in which all the dye has run. I take a hot shower, singing all the while: “When I sing my serenade, our big love scene will be played, boo boo da de da de dum.” I watch the water cascade down my body making it shine as though I had been varnished. I quickly turn the shower to cold, giving off screams of shock.

  “Have you caught something?” strains Mulgrew.

  “Yes. Pneumonia,” I scream and sing ‘Pneumonia a Bird in a Gilded Cage’.

  It’s a good morning, we feel good. Mulgrew has his shit, shave and shampoo and we toddle down for breakfast. We meet Toni and Luciana on the stairs. “Buon giorno, mio tesoro,” I say to her. Today would we like to go to the Vatican? What a splendid idea. Who knows, we might see the Pope. “Hello Pope,” I’ll say, “I’m a Catholic, too! Can I have a piece of the True Cross for my mother? And can you bless my Bing Crosby voice?” First, I visit our Lieutenant to draw my ten pounds wage which came to twelve thousand lire – twelve thousand, it sounded so rich. Well set up, I meet Toni and we hail a taxi.

  “Hail Taxi,” I call, doing the Hitler salute.

  “Wot you do, Terr-ee?” says Toni, laughing.

  “La Vaticino,” I tell the driver. My God, I’m speaking the lingo well.

  Sitting back and holding hands, I can’t resist a tender morning kiss. Oh, sentimental old me! Toni’s lips are soft and velvety; mine are ever so slightly chapped, but she doesn’t complain. It shows you what can be obtained with second-hand equipment. Where are we? We’re on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and about to cross the River Tiber. On the right riverbank is the great Castle San Angelo. On, to the Via Conciliazione which runs directly into the great St Peter’s Square with its great semi-circular colonnade by Bernini. The whole place is teeming with visitors and numerous vendors of holy relics, pictures of Pope Pius, rosaries, etc. The taxi sets us down, and we walk up to the Sistine Chapel with the Swiss Guards outside in their blue and yellow uniforms designed by Michelangelo.