Memoirs 06 - Peace Work

  NAPLES

  A SUNDAY

  Yet another glorious, sunny Roman day. I draw the curtains; the light falls on the slumbering Mulgrew, who stirs with a few mouthy sounds like ‘Abregibera’. I have a quick shower, singing ‘Love thy neighbour, wake up and say how be yer boo boo da de dum.’

  Oh, what a waste! Mulgrew is awake; he calls out, “While you’re there, have one for me.”

  The packing, and I’m baffled as to why each time I do it, there seems to be more stuff than last time. “The suitcase is shrinking,” says Mulgrew, having the same trouble. We lug the cases down to the care of the porter.

  Toni is in the dining-room; she’s not eating. “No I wait for you, my love,” she says with a morning-bright smile. I mouth the words “I love you.” She smiles again, her head inclined to one side. Was her neck giving way? No, it’s just a posture of hers, ha ha. Lovely hot toast, melting butter and conserve – there is a God.

  We are all wearing our rather shapeless travelling clothes. Toni’s are too big for her, while I’m too thin for mine. People keep knocking on my shirt to see if I’m in. Lieutenant Priest looms large. “Are you all packed?” he says. “We board in ten minutes. All hurry along.” Dutifully, we mount our motorized steed for the haul to naughty Naples. This journey will be interesting to me as we will be passing over ground that my regiment has fought over.

  We leave Rome by the Via Appia Nuova, flanked on the left side by the Roman aqueduct that once fed Rome its water. Despite the ravages of time, lots of it is intact, rather like Bill Hall’s body. We pass tall cypress trees and the occasional Roman tomb, where occasional Romans were buried. “I suppose the bombin’ did all that,” said Hall, referring to the ruins. That’s right, Bill; these are specially bombed Roman ruins. Somewhere along this road would one day live Sophia Loren, who once squeezed my hand at a dinner table. But more of that in the future.

  We are passing through the great frascati vineyards where the grapes are being harvested. Peasants with coloured clothes are speckled in the fields. We are on Route Six which will take us through Cassino. It’s a quieter coachload than normal; there’s a sense of anticlimax (why anybody should be anticlimax, I don’t know). Nobody talks much. Toni breaks the silence, “I so excited to go Capri,” she said and squeezed my hand extra hard.

  The warmth, the rumbling along, the scenery flashing past; I nod off to sleep, waking up with a start when my head starts to fall off. “You tired, Terr-ee?” No, just sleepy. “Tell me, Terr-ee, you lak opera, Italian opera?” Yes, I love it. Good, if and when we go back to Rome, she will take me to one. “Which one you lak?” I lak Madam Butterfly, Aida, any romantic ones. “You lak La Boheme?” Yes, mipiace molto. Good we will go and see all of them; after, we’ll have dinner and I can sleep at her mother’s place. Good, now I can go back to sleep again.

  I nod on and off until in the early afternoon we pull over under the shadow of the now ruined monastery at Cassino. I carry the sandwich box on to the grass verge while John Angove brings up the vacuum tea container. We arrange ourselves on the grass and help ourselves to the sandwiches. Toni and I sit in the shade of a tree. I lean against the trunk and look up at the sad spectacle of the ruined monastery. Bornheim sees me and reflects, “Bloody madness, eh?” Yes, bloody madness.

  “You fight here, Terr-ee?” says Toni, with a full mouth.

  “No, I was over that side.” I point behind me. Was it as bad as Cassino? Bad enough.

  Luigi is walking round the Charabong, looking at the tyres. They are like Bill Hall, starting to go bald and will just about last the journey. I wonder if I will.

  After an uneventful lunch, we are back on board. We turn left round a bend and there ahead is the skeleton of the town of Cassino, looking like a First World War setting. A road has been bulldozed through the rubble, but that is all. There are people in the ruins, but where they live, God only knows. Here and there are a few street stalls selling vegetables and fruit – how resilient is the human race.

  Bornheim is reading his Union Jack. “You’re Irish, aren’t you, Milligan?” he says.

  “I couldn’t afford anything else,” I said. “Why?”

  “Well, it says here, in the human race today, the Irish came last.”

  Bloody cheek. It must have been the first of the Irish jokes.

  “Remember this, mate: General Montgomery and Alexander were both Irish. Till they took charge, the English were having the shit knocked out of ‘em, ha!”

  We pass through the ghost of Cassino and travel down what had been called the Royal Mile. This was the road used by the Allies to reach the obliterated town. By day it was constantly shelled by the Germans, who liked that sort of thing; vehicles had to go like hell to avoid being hit. We are bumping along its heavily pitted surface, all of us bouncing up and down like a trampoline. When we hit a deep pothole, the whole lot of us give a great ‘OHHHHHHHH’.

  “I wonder why we always use the letter ‘O’ to express surprise,” I said.

  “Wot you mean?” says Hall, his tiny mind set ablaze by the question.

  “Well, why always choose ‘O’; why not use ‘X’ or ‘K’ or ‘Z’? Like, ‘I’m sorry your cat has been run over’. ‘X!’ Or a combination of letters: ‘I’m sorry your cat has been run over again’. ‘XGHYZLP!’”

  Hall looks blankly at me.

  “Ow long were you in the Army?” he says.

  “Same as I am now, five foot eleven.”

  “You downgraded to B1, weren’t you?” Yes. “Ah,” he says and shakes his head sympathetically.

  On, on, then. We reach the ancient town of Capua, at one time captured by Hannibal and his elephants. We cross the River Volturno by the same Bailey bridge that I crossed as the Fifth Army fought its way north in the mud. Ah, memories, nostalgia and goodbye yesterdays. I have been smoking cigarettes at a rate; my mouth feels like the inside of an Arab wrestler’s jockstrap. Ugh, yuck, splutter, I decide to give up smoking until the next one.

  It seems such a long journey. “Someone’s moved Naples away,” says Mulgrew who is smoking a dog end so short that it’s really fumigating his nose.

  “Che tedioso,” says Toni, resettling her bottom on the seat.

  “Ow many mile ‘ave we got to go?” inquires Hall.

  Bornheim tells him, “We aren’t travelling in miles; we are travelling in kilometres. It’s shorter that way.”

  A weak cheer goes up when Priest points out a roadsign ‘Napoli 10 chilometri’. To raise our morale like the 12th Cavalry coming to the rescue, Hall unleashes his violin and plays Italian pop songs. Fulvio sings them and the Italians join in.

  “They’re happy now,” grins Mulgrew; “they can smell spaghetti.”

  “This could mean the OBE for you, Bill: violinist saves demoralized passengers!” I said.

  Activated by the praise, he waggles his head, crosses his eyes and plays a wobbly version of ‘God Save the King’.

  Mulgrew rises to his feet and salutes. “The toast and marmalade is the King,” he says and is jerked back into his seat as the Charabong lurches forward.

  In the early evening we are entering the northern outskirts of Napoli. “Grazie a Dio,” says Toni, yawning and stretching but not getting any longer. On to the Via Roma with its bustling life and traffic, Luigi weaves in and out, shouting and blowing his horn. He’s happy. Soon he’ll be setting up his wife for bambino N°8; he has already loosened his trousers. Finally we pull up at the Albergo Rabicino, where all the Italian artistes disembark. I kiss Toni goodbye; I’ll see her tomorrow morning. We wave goodbye as we turn off in the direction of the CSE barracks. It’s only ten minutes later when we draw up to the grotty façade of the barracks. I go to the Qstores and pick up my belongings, and back on the bus. Hall and I are to go to the Army Welfare Hotel in the Vumero.

  “Fancy you two lucky buggers staying at a hotel,” says Mulgrew.

  I remind him that Mr Hall and I are now officer status and that they are still soldiers in service of the Crow
n and are thus khaki minions serving their time, and good luck with the food.

  “I’d forgotten how grotty these barracks are,” said Born-heim.

  “Yes, it’s amazing how they suit you,” I said. “Just stand there and I’ll record your picture for posterity.”

  From somewhere, he gets a hammer and strikes this pose.

  Private J. Bornheim – soldier, friend and twit.

  This fragrant moment in time over, Hall and I re-bus and are taken to our hotel. It’s a middle-class affair, called Albergo Corsica in the Vomero. It’s run by the WVS with Italian staff. A Mrs Laws is the manageress, a portly matron in the tweed uniform of the WVS. She hopes we’ll be comfortable; so do we. A terribly weak little Italian porter with a trolley takes our luggage to the lift, or tries to. It takes his entire energy. In the lift, sweating, he leans against the wall, giving a sickly grin that only normally comes on deathbeds.

  I am shown to a room on the second floor. It is at the back and therefore, though the room is high up and the hotel overlooks the bay, I overlook the rear streets. Bill Hall is next door, not for long – what’s my room like? It’s as the matron said, comfortable, just about – a bed, a table, a cupboard, a dressing table, the standard quartet of furnishings. Bill Hall sits on my bed. What’s he going to do?

  “I think I’ll hang around a couple of weeks, sort of holiday.”

  Holiday?

  “We’ve been on one long holiday,” I said.

  “There’s some friends here I want to visit.”

  We both go down for dinner. The dining-hall is crowded with ENS A and AWS bods, all no doubt having a bloody good time at the expense of the taxpayer. My God, they were good days for skiving. As the apparition of Hall enters, the buzz of conversation stops, rather like when a gunman enters a saloon bar. I order minestrone and pasta. “I’ll ‘ave the same,” says Hall, mainly because he can’t pronounce the Italian names himself.

  We discuss things we have to do and both agree to visit the British Consulate on the morrow to collect our passports. It’s too late and I’m too tired for any activity save bed. When I return to my room, the maid is turning down my bed and I hadn’t even offered it to her. “Mi scusi,” she smiles, showing those magnificent white teeth, and that’s all she was going to show me. “Buona notte, dortna bene,” she says and leaves. I survey my ex-Army kit: there’s a big pack, small pack and my big stencilled kitbag. I’ll attend to that on the morrow. I fall asleep to the distant sounds of the streets.

  ∗

  I awake at nine of the clock. I have much to do; I do some in the WC and some in the bathroom. My toilet complete, I knock on Hall’s door to be greeted by a stunning silence. I push the door open. The curtains are closed and so are Hall’s eyes. I awake him as gently as an “OI WAKE UP!” will allow. He gradually comes to; I count him down to consciousness, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Wide awake now, Hall; hands off cocks, on socks! He’ll see me in the foyer in half an hour. Yes, but will I see him? I take breakfast in my stride.

  “Is anybody sitting here?” It’s an English rose of a woman. No, nobody is sitting there. “Mind if I join you?” she says. She is blonde, blue-eyed, nicely filled out, oven-ready, I’d say. She is a singer and has come to join CSE. As there’s nobody else to do it, I introduce myself- DIY. She wants to know what there is to see. I tell her there’s Pompeii. What’s that? It’s a dead city. No, thanks, she says; she’s just come from one, Birmingham. She is satisfied when I say there is extensive shopping on the Via Roma. Will she excuse me? I have an appointment with the British Consul.

  Hall is not in the foyer. I phone up to his room. Yes, yes, he’s coming. Together we get a taxi, I tell the driver Via Roma. We are looking for a passport photographer. Hall looks out the left side and I look out the right. Hall has the eye of an eagle and legs to match. He spots one.

  “There, over there,” he says, rapping on the driver’s window.

  “Fermare!” I shout.

  “Ah, si, capito,” says our photographer, a tall Italian with slick black hair parted in the middle, a little pencilled-over moustache and a grey tight chalk-striped suit. He looked the ideal co-respondent in a divorce case. Yes, si, si, he can have the photographs ready in ‘un’ora’. So, after presenting our visages we have an hour to kill.

  “Let’s kill a policeman,” I say.

  We pass the time window-shopping and having a cup of coffee at the big NAAFI in the Via Roma. We duly collect our photos, which aren’t as bad as some.

  Passport photo of the hearer.

  It looks as if I’ve been on drugs. Hall looks as if he’s been dead a month. Thus supplied, we take a taxi to His Majesty’s Britannic Consul in the Piazza Bagnoli. At a desk with a ‘Ring Bell for Service’, we attract a middle-aged, slightly balding, thin, pale-faced Englishman wearing pebbled glasses that make his eyes stand out like organ stops. Ah, yes, he has received our applications. Have we the photographs? We present them. He looks at them at arm’s length, drawing them towards him then away again. Finally, he says “Which is which?” I point out me; he writes my name on the back. If we come back in a week, they will be ready. Bring five thousand lire each.

  Now Hall and I split, me to the cashier at CSE barracks to sort my finances out. Another taxi. The cashier is a corporal in the Queen’s. Have I the CSE contract? I produce it from other papers. Yes, I’m in CSE for another six weeks; yes, I can have it all in advance. God, I’ll be so rich! It’s almost 72,000 lire! I must be careful; Naples is full of thieves, commonly known as the British Army.

  I taxi to Toni’s hotel. It’s lunchtime and I find her in the dining-room, which abounds with the smell of garlic. Toni greets me; it’s all coming from her – yes, she just had scampi with garlic sauce. What a sauce! She’s anxious to know what day and garlic are we going to Capri? I tell her possibly the day after tomorrow. Only, she will only be allowed to stay at this hotel and garlic for another five days. Don’t worry, I will save her and garlic long before then. That evening would she like to go to the Bellini Theatre where they are showing Night Must Fall? Oh, she and her garlic would love to. OK, I will pick her up at seven and put her down again at one minute past. What am I talking about? Only time will tell. So saying, I catch taxi number three and take me and my 72,000 lire back to my hotel.

  I inquire from the hotel porter about the ferry to Capri. Oh, yes, there are four a day: two in the morning and two in the afternoon. He shows me a printed brochure with times and prices, so I am set fair for the romantic isle where dwells the goddess Gracie Fields. In my bedroom, I lock the door then do an hour’s gloating over my 72,000 lire. I lay it on the bed next to me to have a rest. I shut my eyes. When I open them, the money is still there; the room appears to be safe. Aloud, I say seventy-two thousand lire. It sounds good. I carefully fold the money and place it in my jacket pocket to see if it makes a bulge. No, it doesn’t look like 72,000 lire. I take it out again and it does. I hold it up to the mirror, where it now looks like 144,000 lire! So, I spend a pleasant afternoon’s gloating.

  Comes evening and I pick Toni up in a taxi and we drive up the Via Roma to the Theatre Bellini. Good heavens, Captain O’List is the manager for the show. “How nice to see you again, Spike,” he gushes. “I hear that the tour went very well.” Pay for seats? No, no, no, we can have compli-mentaries. Obviously this man doesn’t know that I’m carrying 72,000 lire. What posh! Captain O’List gives us a box for two. “See you in the interval for a drink in my ofice,” are his parting words.

  Night Must Fall. Toni cannot follow the dialogue, I am constantly having to translate in a hushed whisper. True to his word, Captain O’List is waiting for us during the interval and we have ‘drinky-poos’. Are we going steady? Yes, Toni and I are going steady.

  “We’re going for a week on Capri,” I tell him.

  “Oh,” he says, and lets it hang in the air like the Sword of Damocles. “Oh, Capri, eh? Ha, ha,” he says, the whole shot through with innuendo. Why, oh, why doesn’t he ask me how much money I’
m carrying? “I’m due for demob in four weeks,” he says.

  “Are you going back to the Windmill?”

  “Yes, Vyvyan van Damn has kept the job open.”

  “Do all those wankers who come to the Windmill to see naked birds listen to him singing?”

  “Not many, but it’s a living.”

  The second half puzzles Toni even further, especially the head in the hatbox.

  “What he got in the box?”

  “A head.”

  “Head?”

  “Yes, una testa.”

  “Ah, testa.”

  I enjoyed the play in which Miss Fontana took a leading part.

  At the exit, Captain O’List wishes us goodbye and “Have a nice time on Capri!” Taxi? No, it’s a warm night so we walk down the Via Roma hand in hand and I unravel the play for Toni. By the time we get to the bottom of the Via I have done all the play again and, though I say it, played all the parts better than the actors managed. I flag down one of Napoli’s fleet of decaying taxis.

  “Where we go?” says Toni.

  “Ah ha,” I say, “somewhere nice – Zia Teresa.”

  The driver nods.

  In the taxi, I give Toni a long, lingering, burning kiss causing steam in my trousers. We arrive at the restaurant on the waterfront at Santa Lucia and walk down the side facing on to the bay. Zia Teresa is over a hundred years old; the roof is made of raffia-like straw with rough wooden poles as support. In the centre of the restaurant is the cooking area with a metal cowling over the top. I give the maître d’ a thousand lire note. “Una tavola viacinal mare, per favore,” I say, and we get a table directly on to the sea. As we sit down, night fishermen are hoving to, selling fresh fish to the chef. At the back of the restaurant are a guitar and a violin player plus a singer. “0, mare lucido” he sings.