“Pronto, ”’ says the telephonist.
“Possibile parlare con camera venti-due?”
Soon Toni is on the phone, “What you do, Terr-ee?”
“I’m reading poetry.”
“I come down. We both have tea, yes?”
“Yes, and Toni?”
“What?”
“Boo boo da de dum, the bells of Saint Mary.”
“Oh, very nice, Terr-ee. I come down now.”
When she arrives at my door, I have struck a Robert Taylor pose. “Come in,” I say. It’s not Toni, it’s the chambermaid. Do I want my bed turned down? Blast, my Robert Taylor pose wasted. Toni arrives and we walk down to the dining-room, hand in hand. As we enter there is a great ‘Awwwwwwwwwwwww’ from the cast. It was nice to get these unsolicited testimonials. An enterprising photographer has left his card on every table, a Signor Filippo Nenni. He can take photos during or after the show. Great! He can do my Robert Taylor profile and a couple of Humphrey Bogart with the cigarette in the mouth pose.
Today is Sunday. Back in England my mother will be on her knees before the altar of the Madonna praying that her son won’t catch anything in Italy and save his money, that her son Desmond will get a commission and that my father will stop swearing.
After tea, Toni, Mulgrew, Marisa (one of the ballet girls) and I take a walk down the Via d’Annunzio. It’s crowded with people in their best clothes on a ‘monkey walk’. Down the centre of the Via is a wide pavement with chairs and tables. We choose a table and are immediately pounced on by an energetic young waiter. Holding his tray above his head, he threads his way through the crowds. As we sip chilled Orvieto, Toni is studying a map. Is she lost? The sun is setting on the heights above the town, oblique rays are shafting through the plane trees causing dappled dancing shadows. There is much fist waving and shouting as cars try to weave their way through the crowds. It’s amazing how the Italians shriek at each other – one wouldn’t be surprised if one exploded. Toni points to the heights. “See Roman theatre.” There, silhouetted against the sun were the imposing ruins.
“Didn’t they pick beautiful positions?” says Mulgrew, emptying his glass. Do we want another round? If so, can he borrow a hundred lire from muggins Milligan.
Lots of pretty girls are passing by, chaperoned by what look like Mafia bouncers. Mulgrew concludes that if you had an out of marriage shag in this town, you’d never see the next day. We indulge a few more wines and then wend our way home through the milling throng. At the hotel we discover Bornheim and some of the cast playing pontoon in the lounge.
“Winning?” I asked.
“At the moment, yes,” says Bornheim. “Pontoons only,” he says and scoops the kitty.
By the earnest expression on their faces, I knew the stakes were high. Then I discover it’s two lire a go. Mulgrew wants to play, can he borrow another hundred? I say no, but he goes on his knees. “It’s only a wee hundred,” he says. “I mean all your money is doing at the moment is resting in your wallet.” OK. He is shit lucky, he wins five hundred, pays me back my two hundred.
Jimmy Molloy comes in. “Ah Spike,” he shuffles through some mail and gives me a letter from home. It’s Mother, she’s still on about disease and says when I go to the toilet I must put paper on the seat; also, that Dad is finding the journey from Reigate to Fleet Street too wearing, so they are moving to Deptford. Dad and her are really proud that I am now a NAAFI star!
“How come you never get any mail, Bill?” I said to Hall.
“It’s simple – the buggers don’t bother to write.”
“Are they illiterate?”
“No, it’s just that they have nuffink to say.”
“Do they know you’re alive?”
“Think so, I mean they ‘avent ‘ad any notification from the War Office that I’m dead.”
I have dinner with Toni. What did my mother say about her in the letter? I told her not a word about her, but a warning about lavatory seats. “You think that if I write that would be good?”
“Yes, I think so. Most important is you say you are a Roman Catholic.”
Dinner over, Toni says she is tired, she is going to bed. I accompany her in the lift and kiss her goodnight at the door. “Can I come in?” She says, “No.” Blast. I return to my room. “Boo boo dum de dum de dum.” Yes, definitely as good as Bing Crosby.
∗
There is a general cast call at eleven o’clock, so into the Charabong. En route Italians keep banging angrily on the side. By looking out the window I see that some silly bugger has chalked VIVA TITO on the side of the bus. It was Mulgrew and his Scottish Highland sense of humour. I told him, “We could all have been bloody killed.” He says that was the general idea.
As we de-bus at the stage door of the Theatre Fred, there’s a loud explosion – a bomb has gone off Civil and Military Police start whizzing by in jeeps, armed to the teeth – some were only armed to the throat, some to the knee. The theatre was built for opera, it has an excess of Italian kitsch. We are assembled on the stage and Jimmy Molloy says that parts of the show are slack so we are to run through those bits.
John Angove is not feeling well. He is taken to the Medical Officer who diagnoses that he has measles. Measles at twenty-five! He is put into a quarantine ward and is out of the show. I wonder if they are always caught in the plural?
PATIENT:
What is it, doc?
DOC:
You’ve caught a measle.
PATIENT:
Just one?
I mean, bronchitis is in the singular.
PATIENT:
What is it, doc?
DOC:
You’ve caught bronchitises.
∗
We try out a new gag for the show. I announce that I will fire the slowest bullet in the world. Mulgrew stands one side holding a water biscuit; I, from the other side, aim and fire.
There’s a count of five and then Mulgrew crumples the biscuit manually with a cry of Hoi Up La.
In our dressing-room, there are signs of occupation scrawled on the wall: ‘Harry Secombe was here’, ‘Norman Vaughan was here’, ‘Ken Piatt was almost here’. We dutifully add our names. The manager, a voluble fat Italian, tells us many famous people have been here, including Elenora Duse. He tells us the story of how after she had had a leg amputated, she returned to the stage and people wondered how she would manage with an artificial wooden leg. On the first night, the theatre was crowded with the cognoscenti. It is French theatre custom to bang a mummer’s pole thrice behind the curtain. When the audience heard ‘boom boom boom’, one said, “My God, here she comes now!”
The first night was a packed theatre and a big success. The Town Major has invited the cast to the Officers’ Club. Great. It turned out to be a large glass-fronted building overlooking the sea. Italian waiters move among us distributing drinks. An Italian quintet on a small rostrum is playing background music. I thought I had escaped it, but sure enough they played ‘Lae That Piss Tub Dawn Bab’. All the girl dancers are pounced on by young officers; a Lieutenant Johnny Lee fancied Toni. He engaged her in conversation and even though I was standing next to her, he ignored me. I was furious, my skinny body trembled with jealousy: fool of a man, how could he compete with me? Boo boo da de de dum dum dee dee, and there was more where that came from! The swine has taken her on to the floor for a dance. Not for a moment did he realize that I was once the winner of the Valeta Contest at the Lady Florence Institute, Deptford! And the best crooner with the New Era Rhythm Boys at the New Cross Palais de Danse??? If he wanted credentials I had them! She’d come begging for me to take her back, you’d see.
The evening wears out and we are all on the Charabong back to the Hotel Fred.
“He want to see me again,” said Toni.
“Oh yes,” I said, as near to Humphrey Bogart as possible.
“Yes, I told him, no.”
“Of course, you told him no.”
There was no other answer. I mean I was a ten
pounds a week man, with a great back-up of underwear.
It’s late, we are flagged down by the Military Police. Who are we, where are our papers? Lieutenant Priest explains that we are the untouchables and are left to go our way. It’s one o’clock as I stand snogging outside her bedroom door. “Can I come in?” No I can’t. Blast! Mulgrew or someone has struck again. As I pull back my bedcovers there in the middle is a replica Richard the Third with the message ‘The phantom strikes again’. And so to bed.
The week followed with us going for walks, shopping for trinkets down on the waterfront and visits from Lieutenant J. Lee. He brings Toni flowers. The occasional bomb goes off somewhere in the city and on Thursday an Italian blows himself up and will soon be a Martyr. Soon people are putting flowers on the spot; scrawled on the wall is his epitaph, “Luigi Sapone morl per la patria”. “It beats me,” says Bornheim, “how explosions and blowing up places advances a political cause.” He was right of course. There are other ways to draw attention to your cause. Standing naked outside tube stations would hit the media or anonymously posting people a bread pudding, with the warning ‘Give up or you’ll get another’. That, or nocturnally digging a fish pond stocked with goldfish in people’s gardens with the same warning. Better still, attack political figures by sealing up their front door keyholes and letter box. Bornheim agrees. He suggests parking combine harvesters outside people’s front doors.
Lieutenant Priest is warning us that we are to attend a VD lecture at the Medical Rooms on the sea front in Trieste. “You’ve all got to attend. It’s an order to all parties about to enter Austria.” Came the occasion, we were shown into a room of a requisitioned warehouse where chairs were arranged before a projector screen. A medical orderly is putting pamphlets on all the chairs. They warn of the horrors of VD and its related ailments. “Eyes Front,” says Lieutenant Priest as an MO enters. “At Ease,” he said and made a sign to sit. The medical orderly activated the projector and as the MO spoke we were subjected to a series of men’s genitals all in various stages of VD, from a small spot to a great red hanging blob. These were accompanied by cries of ‘Hard luck, mate’ and ‘Stick to wanking’. It took about twenty minutes and we were then driven back to the hotel.
THE NIGHT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS
After the show, one evening, Signor Nenni and his wife set up a huge box camera which swayed perilously as he placed it on a tripod. It looks like a monster from one of H.G. Wells’s books, a Warlock. In a cracked voice he is instructing his wife in the placing of the floodlights. They are both over sixty and move with caution. “Poco, poco,” he says to her. She had curvature of the spine and in the gloom looks like Quasimodo. These are the results of his efforts.
Johnny Bornheim, accordionist and furrier, on stage in Trieste.
A DAY FOR SWIMMING
See, that means we’ve got to go near water. We are taken to a beach adjacent the ill-fated Castello Miramar. Toni enlightens me about the legend. It was a duke and a broken love affair that drove him to suicide. Ah broken romance. There should be repair depots, like the A A.
A BROKEN MARRIAGE DEPOT.
THE PHONE RINGS.
OPERATOR:
Broken Marriages Depot.
VOICE:
I wish to report a broken romance at the turn off 6 on the M1.
OPERATOR:
Have you got all the pieces?
VOICE:
Yes, they’re all over the verge.
OPERATOR:
We’ll send a solicitor right away.
We all lay out our towels and after a liberal application of olive oil, we lay back and soak up the sun. Toni is next to me, I hold her hand. I give it a squeeze but it’s so lubricated it pops out. I do it again, it’s a turn-on.
Toni asks if I believe in ghosts.
“No.”
“You think we come back after we die?”
“Well none of my family have. I did have an Aunt Jane Milligan who went to a spiritualist to contact her late husband. When he was contacted, the spiritualist asked did Aunti Milligan want to ask him a question. She said, “Yes, ask him wot ‘e did with the fish knives.””
Toni persists. “Perhaps we come back different.”
“Like what?”
“Like tree or horse.”
“No, I don’t want to come back as a horse.”
It’s frightening. Suppose I come back as a tomcat and have to have that terrible operation? Oh, no. Toni giggles, “Suppose you come back as a woman, what you do?” I told her I’d go for a walk and see what happened.
I’m starting to burn so I plunge into the waters of the beckoning Adriatic. Mulgrew is standing waist-deep. “Are there any sharks in the Adriatic?” I assure him that there are sharks in all warm waters. “Oh Christ,” he says.
Greta Weingarten, our German girl, starts to swim out. I follow her. We go about a fifth of a mile; she turns and says, “You are gute swimmer.” How a German girl got into our show was a mystery.
A FORCED LABOUR CAMP IN RUSSIA.
HITLER IS SHOVELLING SALT AND SHIT.
HITLER:
It is not ein mystery! She is there as my personal representative of the Third Reich!!!
She always radiated a sense of aloofness. I suppose after the macho attitude of wartime Germany she found this collection of musicians and poofs a letdown, except that – ha! ha! – she was going around with our chief poof. All very strange: who did what to whom and how? We race each other back to the shore, I just beat her.
Bill Hall greets me. “You put the shits up Johnny, telling him there were sharks here.”
Toni asks me, “What is the shits up?” I roll over laughing, hearing this innocent voice. “What is the shits up?” she says again. I explain, you know in French, merde? She does, “So, it is rude?”
“Yes.”
The afternoon is one of running up and down the beach and splashing in the shallows, then lazing in the sun. At four o’clock we open our packed lunches, sit in the sun and masitcate our sandwiches, as eaten by the Earl of Sandwich. But who invented eating? Was it Tom Eating? What a breakthrough. Until then people kept dying of starvation. Then, Tom Eating discovered food! At first, the superstitious said, “Nay, eating food is the devil’s work.” Many eaters died for their beliefs, but in the end food won through and Tom Eating was beatified and became St Eating, Patron Saint of Food. So ended a lovely day out.
That night just after the show finished, BOOM! a bomb explodes near the theatre. We all rush out, some of us still in costume. A crowd has gathered, there are angry shouts, they suspect Yugoslavian extremists. Toni says to me, “Did that give you shits up?” She knows it’s rude and laughs. It’s not as exciting as it should be. There’s no blood, no dismembered bodies. An Italian partisan, smothered in bullets and a machine pistol, stands on one of the bomb-shattered tables and with veins standing out like whipcords makes an impassioned speech. He says no Yugoslav is going to take Trieste as long as he has breath in his body. The table collapses and he is pitched, still shouting, into the crowd. The American police arrive, the Italian police arrive and, true to form, last are the British police. They start to ask questions and are highly suspicious of all of us in costume. Lieutenant Priest explains that we are travelling mummers and all is well. For all his patriotic utterances the partisan is taken into custody and is driven away in a jeep still declaiming that Trieste is Italian.
It had been quite a day, but there was still the night and, with it, Bill Hall’s nocturnal desires. Somewhere in Trieste some old boiler of a woman will get his attention. “Listen everybody,” says Lieutenant Priest. “Tomorrow is a day off, the Charabong is going to Grado at ten for swimming.” We give him a cheer. This night Toni says I can come into her bedroom. Ha, ha. We start snogging on the bed. So far our affair has been quite innocent, but this time it starts to get serious. She pushes my fumbling hands away. “You give me the shits,” she says and it doubles me up with laughter. But we were getting serious – all those little biological
bugs inside us egging us on! Helppp! I’m on course to severely seduce Miss Fontana!
GRADO
Next day, we are all in the Charabong looking forward to the day at Grado. We are singing, “Why Are We Waiting?”. In this instance, it’s Bill Hall. He finally appears blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight. Luigi lets the clutch in and we are on our way.
Grado is a spit of land accessible by a causeway. It’s apparently a fisherman’s paradise. It’s not much of a paradise for us. The beach is brown and so is the water. It’s all due to a muddy bottom, of which I’d seen a few. However, it’s a clear blue sky and hot. Toni and I hire a boatman who rows us to where the sea turns blue. We dive over the side. It’s like swimming in champagne, you can see the bottom. We sun ourselves and take a few snaps.
∗
We sit in silence, holding hands, watching the wake of the boat. The boatman smiles, he knows we’re in love. “Buona, eh?” he smiles. Plimping (yes, plimping) on the sea are fishing boats, small two-men affairs – and, let’s face it, in those days two-men affairs were not that frequent. It was all very stimulating – the salt water drying on your body, the tranquillity and being in love.
Toni taken by me in Grado Me taken by Toni, Grado.
Our time is up; the boatman heads for the shore.
Mulgrew greets us. “Ahoy, there. Welcome to Grado.”
“You’re welcome to it, too,” I said.
Mulgrew has buried Bill Hall in the sand and shaped it like a woman’s body, with huge boobs. Alas, I lost that photo. “How much was the boat ride?” he says. I tell him a hundred lire for half an hour. “A hundred lire,” he said, his Scots face wincing with pain. “Why you can get three bottles of wine for that!” I agreed but said they wouldn’t float as well as a boat.
There’s a sort of beach café with a straw-matted roof. Toni and I sit on high stools sipping fresh orange juice. Mulgrew has lemon juice.
“It’s got more vitamins in.”