Toni unwraps the presents she bought on Capri. They are all delighted. Gioia is delighted with her pincushion and hugs it to her; Signora Fontana tries on her headscarf. Lily is weaving from side to side and trying to drill a hole in the table with her index finger. She is nodding her head – how can he hear that on the phone? She seems to be going into a trance. Who is she speaking to, Svengali? I have another cup of tea. They want to know have I any plans for the evening?
Yes, but I left them in my other jacket pocket – I remember, though. I thought Toni and I might go to the pictures. “Oh, yes,” says Toni enthusiastically. Splendid, her mother is expecting an old schoolfriend and will no doubt spend the evening going over the old school exams. “Do you remember 2X2 = 4?”
“As if it were yesterday.”
The drag of going to an ENS A cinema is that I have to wear my CSE uniform to be allowed in free. When we arrive, we see they are showing Fantasia. I’v seen it before but it’s good enough to see again, if only for the hippo and crocodile ballerinas in the ‘Dance of the Hours’. In the dark, we sit holding hands and sucking boiled sweets. It’s a very enjoyable, relaxing evening until three soldiers sit in front of us. The one in front of me has a head the size of a Dickens’s Christmas pudding with ears that look like another two heads looking over his shoulders. He totally obscures the screen and Italy. I have to watch with my head inclined at sixty degrees.
Film over, we usher forth. It’s now dark and Rome is at its best – people in their Sunday clothes, the streets thronged with those just out walking or sitting at street cafés. “Come,” says Toni, “I show you nice place.” Back home, at this time of night, I could have shown Toni Reg’s Café opposite Brockley Cemetery where you could get eggs, sausage and chips with bread and butter for half a crown. I daren’t tell, I didn’t want to make her jealous. Three streets up she shows me a little trattoria where we settle. Would she like dinner here? No, “Just glass wine.” She tells me, with a note of sadness in her voice, that when her father was alive he sometimes used to bring the family here for dinner. Did my father ever take me to dinner?
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“50 Riseldene Road, Brockley.”
“That is restaurant?”
“No, that’s my home.”
Toni laughs, a plus mark. We sip our wine watching life’s circus pass by.
“People in Rome very chic, Terr-ee, yes?”
Those who are perambulating do so at a pace that is not far short of standing still. The ladies throw their weight on to alternate feet to give their bottoms a slow rotating wobble. All Italian women have it. Rome must be a voyeur’s paradise. Toni and I point out people that interest. For instance, what is the old bald man with watery eyes doing with a sixteen-year-old temptress? What tablets is he on? Toni releases titbits of scandals.
“All men in Rome like young girl,” she says with a knowing look. “When I in Rome ballet, many old men come to stage door and give me flowers, many.”
We finish our wine and taxi back home. She shushes me as the rest of the family are in bed. She rustles us up some sandwiches. We sit and eat, listening to the AF Network turned low.
“I lak jizz but I no understand.”
“If you like it, that’s all that matters. It’s like wine – you like it or you don’t.”
In retrospect, I realize how simple our conversations were, almost mundane.
After a quick canoodle on the couch and a lot of lascivious whispers from me and a clothesline of no, no, noes from Toni, I go to my bedroom. I lie in bed, my mind wandering lonely as a cloud that drifts on high. I couldn’t wait to get to England and start the act on its road to fame…
∗
What a treat: I’m awakened by Toni, all bathed and perfumed, with my breakfast on a tray. Her mother has gone to work, sister Lily to college, only Gioia in the flat – she’ll have to be killed. “How you sleep?” she says. I tell her I slept on my left side with my knees drawn up under my chin. “Theeese bed OK for you?” Yes it’s OK for me, but too narrow to be OK for us. “You naughty.”
When I’ve bathed and dressed, she tells me we are going visiting to see Luciana Campila, her ballet friend from the tour. “Via XXI di Aprile,” she tells the taxi. Why is the street called 21 April? She doesn’t know. It might be after some special occasion, then again it might be named after 21 April.
You can never tell with a local council – in Brockley, we had a Fred Street and an Enid Terrace.
The Campilas are a bustling middle-class Italian family with two daughters. When we arrive, the middle-aged plump Signora Campila is in the kitchen massaging a huge lump of dough to make pasta, with the aid of her daughters. They all break into animated conversation but, after a brief introduction, I might as well be tied up in the garden. As they continue, I wish I was. There are bursts of conversations, then shrieks of laughter – every now and then one of them giving me a sympathetic look as though I should be tied up in the garden. Luciana has become engaged to Dennis Evans, a military pianist at CSE Naples. They are to be married and live in Cwmllynfell, which he can’t even spell. He’s a miner; they will live with his mother and father in one room and live happily ever after, until she flees back to Rome two months later, covered in coal dust and pregnant – but that’s all in the future. My future will start the moment this cabal of females breaks up. “Terr-ee, you lak cup of coffee?” says Toni.
How nice, she still remembers me! I sip my coffee like I’ve just come back from the dead. From what I can make out of the conversation, it’s all scandal. When they get excited, the Campilas attack the dough with greater ferocity. It looks like three women beating up a malleable midget.
After a couple of hours in Coventry, Toni says we are leaving. I’d left hours ago. We go back home where Gioia has prepared us a salad lunch.
“The opera this evening, tell me about it!”
“Ah, you lak very much – Aida in the Terme di Cara-calla.”
Did I hear right? We’re going to watch an opera being held in Caracalla’s bath?
“Yes, Terr-ee, in the, how you say, rovina.”
Ah the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, how hygienic! Do we have to take soap and towel?
It was an evening I’d never forget. The first bonus was we had a giant full moon, a cool evening. We arrive to crowds already entering the seating area in front of the stage, which is built into a giant arch in the ruins. I even thought I heard nightingales. I’d never seen this opera before. It was such a spectacle! And a giant cast. I was pretty stunned when, in the Grand March, it seemed every film extra in Rome was on stage, including two elephants! There was a wonderful vibrant orchestra of about sixty. The principals were Maria Caniglla and Giuzzo Neri; it was bel canto singing, soaring in the Roman night with ecstatic applause after each favourite aria. I was completely entranced. This was better than Harry James, better than two eggs, sausage and chips at Reg’s Café. At the end I sat there stunned, what a production! Time and again I was moved to tears by the music, was it really written by a man called Joe Green? Amazing.
After the opera I had promised to take Toni and her family to dinner at an hotel they had recommended – Albergo Tenente, wow! As Secombe would say, “There’s posh for you.” It’s modern but wonderfully tasteful; everywhere, it’s white marble and gilt. The dining-rooms are on the sixth floor overlooking the Tiber, the ruined Roman Ponte Sublicio and the Tiberine Island. A fawning manager greets us and a fawning waiter attends our table, how I love it. The Fontanas aren’t a well-to-do family – the mother has to work – so this is a treat for them, I can tell it by the delighted expression on Signora Fontana’s face. Mind you, the expression on my face when I saw the bill was something else. I mean there’s a limit to everything, even 72,000 lire!
The head waiter renders us a list of this evening’s specialities; he delivers it all with flamboyant gestures, rather like an excerpt from Shakespeare. It’s all a waste of time, as none of us want any. He deflates visi
bly like an actor who’s been booed. He hands us to a second waiter who takes our order with a slightly crimped mouth that looks like a chicken’s bum under pressure. The ladies are all agog with the munificence of the surroundings.
“Un bel posto, Terr-ee,” says Signora Fontana, whose head is all but revolving.
“Did you know, Terr-ee, Mussolini come here to eat?” says Toni.
“So have I,” I said.
“Mussolini,” says Miss Fontana, “is not bad man, he stupid.”
He must have been to pay these prices.
We talk about the opera. I lament the fact we don’t have such a plethora of wonderful voices back home.
“But you hev Gracie Fields,” says Toni.
“Yes,” I say, “we have Gracie Fields,” and leave it at that.
The meal passes with me trying to interject into the conversation. I knew a few Italian words that would suffice: ‘Avero’ (is that true), ‘la penna del mia zia e nel giardino’ (the pen of my aunt is in the garden) or ‘Mio cane ha mangato ilgatto’ (my dog has eaten the cat) and ‘nostra cameriere ha profumati ginnochi’ (our waiter has perfumed knees) – all said much to the bafflement of Signora Fontana, but it has Toni laughing.
“My mother think you mad,” she says.
“I see, then I must tell you that il papa non suona lafisarmonica bene” (the Pope cannot play the accordion well).
At this Signora Fontana laughs out loud, then stops herself with a hand over her mouth.
The chicken’s-bum waiter brings the bill, face downwards on a silver tray (not him, the bill). I turn it over and fake a heart attack. “Call a doctor,” I say. “No no no, on second thoughts, call a financier.” After this clowning, I make big of paying the bill. How I loved those huge Italian bank notes. As they are carried away, I fake tears and sobbing.
We are all fairly merry with wine as we taxi back home. Lily, who has heard that I can croon, wants me to sing ‘una canzone come la jizz’. I’m well lubricated enough to go straight into ‘Boo boo boo the thrill is gone, the thrill is gone, I can see it in your eyes’. I couldn’t fail, I had three captive females and I’d paid for the dinner. Lily claps. “Bravo, Terr-ee,” she says. Good, a lone clap is better than a single herpe.
Arriving back home, Signora Fontana looks at her watch: ‘Mama mia’, look at the time, she has to get up early for work. So, with a chorus oibuona nottes we retire for the night.
Alas, we collide a little later when we all try to use the loo. Flushes and blushes. I lie in bed going over the evening – how nice this all was, I would certainly miss it.
What was this new terraced house my parents had moved into in delightful Deptford like? Did it have a coke boiler and baths every Friday night? Did my father still wear long underwear in one piece that he shed like a butterfly emerging? Could his socks still stand up on their own? With these fond memories, I fell asleep.
∗
A new dawn, a new day, the same old me. I awake to catch Toni emerging from the bath, wrapped in a towel. Temptation at this time of the morning: she looks glowing. I grab her and kiss her – holding her up so her feet leave the ground, only to drop her at the approach of Gioia who will have to be killed.
Toni has arranged for us to have our photo taken by ‘Very good photograph man, best in Rome’. Go on, say it, and the most expensive!! I remember the great days when my roll of money was 72,000 lire – now it’s down to 30,000, just a ghost of itself! The photographer’s trade name is Luxardo; his real name is II Conto Julio Di Sacco. He is of noble blood and six foot tall – so good-looking, it hurts. He speaks flawless English, has been to Caius College, Cambridge, wears a dazzling white shirt and trousers and a black silk neckerchief and is as queer as a coot.
“Good morning,” he says. “Let’s see, it’s,” he looks up his leather appointments book, “Mr and Mrs Fontana.” Wrong. Mr Milligan and Miss Fontana. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
From his posh front office, we enter his studio: very large, a mass of equipment and lights and a young boy. “This is Francesco, my assistant.” And queer as a coot. Would we like to sit on this couch? He stands behind a large wooden box camera, talks rapidly in Italian to the lad who is putting a plate in. The Count comes forward and arranges us with our heads together. He’s different, he doesn’t want us to say cheese, he doesn’t take pictures of those unending grinning idiots that plague the world of photography. “I want you both to look serious.” He pauses for a look through the lens. “Are you both in love?” Yes, I’m both in love. “Good, then you think that when I say ready.” He takes a giant stride ‘twixt us and the camera, very much like Jacques Tati. Finally, he settles. “Ready? In love, hold it.” Hold what? A light flashes. “Very good,” he says to himself. “Now I’m going to take you individually. Miss Fontana, then.” He giantstrides towards her and places her hand under her chin. “Like that, very good.” He giantstrides back, lights a cigarette, tosses his head back to eject the smoke and aims through the lens.
“Think nice things,” he says. The flash of light, then it’s my turn. Please, God, can he make me look like Robert Taylor. “No, don’t look at the camera, Mr Milligan, just to the right. Think nice things.” I think of my nice things – a flash and it’s all over. “They’ll be ready day after tomorrow.” With great courtesy, he bows us out.
Toni and I decide to walk for a while. We are on the Via Tritoni, right in the heart of the city – well, actually, more in the kidneys. Toni eulogizes about how handsome the Count was. “He very good-looking man.” Not quite, Toni, a very good-looking it. Am I sure? Positive. No! Yes!! We have a nice, long, lazy walk and eventually end up at the Fonte di Trevi, its gushing waters giving a scene of cool relief in the hot atmosphere of the city. “We must throw in money and make wish,” says Miss Fontana. I peel off a thousand lira note as though to throw in. “No, no,” she takes some small change from her handbag and gives me a coin. “We throw together.” She smiles. We watch our coins slither to the bottom. “Make wish now,” she says. What I wished for, I can’t remember. I wonder what, in those distant days, it was…I wonder, too, what Toni wished for and did it come true?…
It’s time for a coffee, etc. We find a small café, etc. and sit outside. It’s a delightful day; it seems that Rome has endless sunny days that pass by almost unnoticed, etc.
Here my diary suddenly stops. All it says is ‘Measured for a suit!’ I remember this was done at the prompting of Toni, who knows a ‘good, cheap tailor!’. He has a shop on the ground floor of the Teatro Marcello. Inside it’s small and dark, he is small and dark. He smiles, he has small dark teeth. All the time he nods his head as if the neck is loose. Oh, yes, he can have the suit ready in three days if ‘we pay a small service charge. I choose a cloth but Toni doesn’t like it. Has she something against purple and yellow check? I’ll be the talk of Deptford. ‘There he goes,’ they’d say, or ‘Here he comes,’ depending on which direction I was going. No, no, no! She chooses a dark cloth, with a faint stripe.
“Theese more elegant, Terr-ee,” says the little devil. Of course, I say yes. If she asked me to wear a transparent loin cloth, gumboots and a revolving hat, I’d have agreed. Standing on a chair, he measures me. Inside leg, which side does the signore dress? Near the window, I told him. He takes my chest measurement twice. He doesn’t believe it the first time. Do I like padding? Oh, yes. Where? Everywhere. Do I like wide bottoms? On some women, yes, Boom Boom.
∗
So, dear reader, we come to my two blank days. However, on 23 September my diary continues. “Lazy day, went to Parco Botanico. Lunch in park. Carriage drive back home. Madam Butterfly in evening, awful singing. Toni tells me organized by black marketeers, claque in evidence.”
Yes, Madam Butterfly was at the Rome Royal Opera House. Toni has two free tickets that her mother had given to her by a customer at the CIT travel agency. What a treat to look forward to! But it was a night of suppressed hysterical laughter. The whole opera was financed and cast by black marketeers. I cou
ldn’t believe it. When first I saw Madam Butterfly, she was huge, with a heaving bosom. I thought, out of this frame will come a most powerful voice. When she opened her mouth to sing, you could hardly hear anything. To accentuate the shortcoming, she overacted, throwing her arms in the air, clasping her hands together, falling on her knees with a groan, running across the stage with loud, thudding feet – all to thunderous applause from an obvious claque. Then we wait for Lieutenant Pinkerton: my God, he’s half her size! He can’t be more than five foot five inches and so thin that when he stood behind her, he vanished. He has a piercing tenor voice, high up in the nose, with a tremendous wobbly vibrato that fluctuates above and below the real note. He is obviously wearing lifts in his shoes that make him bend forward from the ankles as though walking in the teeth of a gale. If that isn’t all bad enough, he is wearing what must be the worst toupee I’ve seen. It appears to be nailed down, the front coming too far forward on the forehead with a slight curl all round where it joins his hair.
Trying to laugh silently, I’m almost doubled up in pain. All around me are Mafia-like creatures – one wrong move and I’ll be knifed. So be it, no comedy could exceed this. We notice that when Pinkerton tries for a high note, he shoots up on his toes, putting him at an even more alarming angle. When he and she embrace, she envelopes him completely, his little red face appearing above her massive arms as though he’s been decapitated. I’m carried on the tide of enthusiasm. When the claque jump up applauding, so do I. “Bravo, encore!” I shout. It was a night I can never forget.
At the little restaurant after the show, I keep breaking into fits of laughter as I recall it all. Toni is split down the middle, both halves being equal to the whole. She’s ashamed that something so bad should go on at the Royal Opera House. “Disgrazia,” she says, but continues to laugh through it.