Memoires: Peace Work (1986) Read online

  “He is a bugger,” says Priest, and departs.

  Another knock on the door.

  “Just a minute,” says Mulgrew, again tucking his vest between his legs. “Come in.”

  It’s buxom dancer Greta Weingarten. She wants to know would we swop our chocolate ration for her cigarettes. Alas, we have eaten it all. She departs and again Mulgrew lets it all swing free.

  “Ohhh, Rita,” groaned Mulgrew, making a well-known sign.

  “I must change,” I say.

  “What’s it this time, Dr Jekyll?” says Mulgrew.

  It’s an hour to curtain up. I’m on first, playing trumpet in the band, then a nightshirted singer in ‘Close the Shutters, Willy’s Dead’, then on guitar in the Bill Hall Trio – or the Mulgrew-Milligan Duo. The show starts with no sign of Hall: the entire cast are on-stage singing ‘San Francisco’. This is followed by our MC, Jimmy Molloy, with a dreadful American accent.

  “Howdee folks,” he says, “welcome to Barbary Coast. For the next two hours we will be…” etc. etc., as the girls go into the can-can.

  The Barbary Coast Belles heavily posed with Keith Crant.

  ∗

  Interval and Hall appears. “Wots orl the fuss I’m in time for the act aren’t I?” We are again the hit of the evening. The applause was longer than normal; we do an extra encore and busk ‘Undecided’.

  PADUA AGAIN

  “Ah Ter-ee, today we go see Basilica St Anthony of Padua.”

  She is a little bossy boots.

  “OK. Mulgrew wants to tag along.”

  “OK.”

  Ah! That basilica! Built in the eleventh century!! And looking fresh and magnificent. Seven weathered bronze cupolas are its roof; it looks like a multiple Santa Sophia. As you approach the entrance, there is a Donatello, a magnificent bronze equestrian statue of Erasmo di Narni (Rasmus the Nana). Inside is a treasure house of marble statues and paintings. Suddenly, the outside noise is subdued, voices become sibilant. Toni has covered her head with a black lace shawl; mine is covered in Brylcreem. Catholics all, we cross ourselves with Holy Water that looks like a breeding ground for typhoid. I recalled how a priest at St Saviour’s, Brockley Rise, a hygiene fanatic, used to add Dettol to the Holy Water. When we returned from mass, my father asked: “Have you been to church or had an operation?”

  Here, mass is about to be said. Holding candlesticks, a chanting string of choirboys with faces like cherubim precede a grim-faced priest and retinue. He is mouthing the words, but not singing. He’s heard it all before.

  “You want stay for mass?” whispers Toni.

  “OK, just a little.”

  We slide our knees into an empty pew. The chanting echoes round the vaulted ceiling like trapped birds trying to escape. The gloom of the interior is punctured by a poin-tillism of candles flickering before statues with sightless eyes and marbled brains. The waft of stale incense is being topped up with fresh ignitions. Old ladies in black eschew older prayers. They pass the Stations of the Cross, each one jostling with her neighbour for a better place in heaven. Why are the poor so rich in religion? Do the godless rich rely on St Peter taking bribes? “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus,” intones the priest. The communicants, heads hanging like condemned murderers, scuffle to the Communion rail, their heads jerk back to receive the Host. It’s rather like a petrol station, each one being refilled for their spiritual journey.

  It was nice to hear the tongue of the Romans still in use. There’s the final blessing – Dominus vobiscum; we reply, Et cum spirito tuo, and Ta raaaa…that’s the end. We walk out into the bright sunshine. Mulgrew is gasping for a fag, especially one of mine. I open my silver case, he takes one, I snap the case shut like Bogart. I tap my cigarette on the lid. With a flick, I send the cigarette up my nose.

  “That’s the first time I’ve been in a Catholic church,” said Mulgrew (a lapsed Scottish Presbyterian).

  “I promise I won’t tell anyone,” I said. Toni wants to tidy up her hair, “That lace shawl catch my hair.” She got Mulgrew to hold her mirror.

  Mirror, mirror! Toni fixes her hair with the aid of Mulgrew.

  I drop these photos in from time to time so you don’t think I’m making this all up.

  The occasion is marred by rain. We run for the covered walkways by the shops and finally make a dash for the Blancoed Lion. Ah! There’s some more mail. My folks have sent me a parcel of books and magazines, so I settle down for a good afternoon’s read. I read we now have a Labour government with Clem Attlee as Prime Minister. After having that wonderful man Churchill, we now have someone who looks like an insurance clerk on his way to a colonic irrigation appointment. I ask Mulgrew what he thinks of Attlee.

  “I never think of Attlee.”

  “Do you think of any politicians?”

  “I sometimes think of what Bessie Braddock looks like with her clothes off. It’s therapeutic! Something else, politicians should only be allowed to make speeches with their trousers down. It would be a test of their sincerity.”

  Is Mulgrew mad? Could Churchill have made his ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ speech with his trousers down?

  SPEAKER:

  Will the honourable gentleman lower his trousers and answer the question.

  CHURCHILL:

  I’m sorry, Mr Speaker, but I’ve forgotten my underpants…

  VENICE AGAIN

  VENICE AGAIN

  The rain continues, thunder added to the downpour. I read Mulgrew bits of spicy headlines:

  Nude trombone player in bath mystery

  FILM STAR SWALLOWS OIL SLICK

  …etc. etc. The Daily Mirror wins the prize with its headline about a vicar molesting choir boys:

  REVEREND SMITH: GO UNFROCK YOURSELF

  It was in deluge conditions that we set out for the theatre, the windows steamed up, the roar of the rain incessant.

  “Christ,” says Bornheim. “We’ll end up on Mount Ararat with two of each animal.” He peers through the window. Bornheim enjoyed a good peer.

  Lieutenant Priest is poking the driver, pointing up and saying, “Sunny Italy, si?” Luigi grins and shrugs his shoulders. Luigi liked a good shrug.

  MY MOTHER: Where have you been to this time of night? ME: I’ve been out shrugging, Mum.

  ∗

  Thank God, the barge has put up canvas awnings. We push out into the Lagoon show, the spray washing over us all crouched in the back. Some people like a good crouch.

  ∗

  MY MOTHER: Have you been out shrugging again? ME: NO, I’ve been out crouching.

  ∗

  We arrive at the theatre damp. Bill Hall is missing again. I discover him asleep in the dressing-room, covered in an army overcoat. Stretched out, his feet protruding, he looked like an effigy of a very down-market crusader tomb. He tells me he missed the transport home last night. What kept him?

  “I met this girl from the box office.”

  Girl?? She’s this side of fifty, wears pebble-dash glasses…

  “Be grateful for bad eyesight, Bill,” says Mulgrew.

  What a mess! This dressing-room that once housed Caruso, Pavlova, Tibaldi, now has Hall’s laundry strung across it.

  The show is a bit of a fiasco (which bit I’m not sure). The thunder drowns out most of the dialogue. This was the night when during the mock fight Chalky White split my lip. In a rage, I shouted above the thunder, “You cunt!” The soldier audience dissolved into laughter. It didn’t end there. When White made his next entrance, a drunken voice from the gallery shouted, “Look, it’s that cunt again.”

  The show finishes but the rain doesn’t. “It’s a serial,” says Bornheim. We sat huddled in our motor barge.

  “Che pioggia,” says the helmsman.

  “Wots ‘ee say?” says Hall.

  “He says what rain,” I said.

  “Tell him King George the Sixth.”

  The thunder rackets overhead, the sky is gashed by lightning. The Lagoon lights up like a silver tray, the surface is a fleece of raindrops. We
make the causeway soaked to the skin. I help Toni from the barge and give them a quick squeeze. “Pleaseeeee, Tereeee,” she exclaimed. “You are naughty, catlivo boy.” Why do men want to squeeze women’s boobs? It only puts them out of shape. It’s something to do with being weaned.

  By eleven o’clock we are back at the Blancoed Lion. We rush upstairs to dry off and rush down for dinner. I’m staring into Toni’s eyes. Waiter, waiter, a double bed please! Would signor like anything on it? Yes, Miss Fontana with as little dressing as possible! Arggghhhhhh! The rain has stopped and after dinner the Trio play for dancing. We invite the waitresses to join in. May I have the next Spaghetti Neapolitan with you? The dance leads to trouble, some of the local yobs have started to gather outside at the large glass window and now start shouting threats at the Italian girls for dancing with Allied soldiers. They make that nasty sign of cutting women’s hair. We stop the dance as they are trying to break in, so we phone the Military Police. We block the doorway, standing shoulder to shoulder. Terry Pellici, a cockney Italian, was remonstrating with them. There’s a lot of barging, chest to chest. Maxie, our strong man, bodily picks up one of the mob and hurls him back into the crowd. It stems the tide long enough for the Redcaps’ arrival in a jeep, and disperses what could have been a nasty situation. And so to bed – first, a tap on Toni’s door to say goodnight and give them a quick squeeze. “Pleaseeeee, Tereeee.”

  ∗

  Next day is bright and sunny. We are awakened by our nubile waitress with the tea trolley. What a luxury! She has nice legs and a wobbly bottom with the consistency of a Chivers jelly. Mulgrew lights his first cigarette of the day, has a fit of coughing that sounds like a plumber unblocking a sink. With a contused face and eyes watering, he says, “Oh, lovely! Best fag of the day.” Then falls back exhausted on the pillow.

  Toni has gone on the roof to sunbathe. “I want brown all over,” she says. “If you come up, make a noise.” I promise I will yodel like Tarzan. Ah! Some more mail has caught up with me and a parcel! My mother’s letter is full of warnings about show business: “It can ruin your health, and knock yourself up.” How does one knock oneself up?

  INSTRUCTOR:

  Take up the normal standing position, clench fist, then start to rotate the arm, getting faster and faster. When going at good speed, thud fist under chin and travel upwards.

  Terry Pellici is leaving today to be demobbed. He asks us all to have a farewell drink; so, I say farewell to my drink and swallow it. I ask Terry was it awkward, being Italian by descent, having to serve in the Allied Army and fight his own people? “That’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m an Eyetie cockney. In a war you got to be on somebody’s side, so I was on somebody’s side.”

  “You got relatives living here?”

  “Yer, in Cattolica. I went to visit them. It was funny – most of ‘em were in the Eyetie Army. I thought,” here he started to laugh, “one of them might say, you shoota my uncle.” Terry had been in the 74 Mediums, a sister regiment to the 56 Heavy. “They used me as an interpreter. I did well with Eyetie POWs: I tell them first thing they had to give up was their watches. I made a bomb on them in Tunis.” He brandishes an expensive chronometer: “Eyetie colonel.”

  He asks me for my home address and promises to contact me when I return. He never did. In 1976 I phoned him. “Is that Pellici’s Café?”

  “Yer, ‘oo is it?”

  “You wouldn’t know me. I was killed in the war.”

  “Oo is that?”

  “Gunner Milligan.”

  “Spike! I’ve been meaning to write to you.” Thirty years he’s been meaning to write!

  We finish the booze up and Terry gets on his Naples-bound lorry. First, I take a posed picture of him sorrowing at his departure.

  Terry Pellici’s farewell pose

  ∗

  Toni! She should be nude by now. I tiptoe up the stairs with Bornheim, my camera ready to click. She must have heard because by the time we got there she had her petticoat on. I got Bornheim to hold her while I took this memorable shot.

  Toni resisting being snapped in her petticoat.

  ∗

  That night, during the interval, Lieutenant Priest comes round with the wages or, as Hall called it, the Dibs. We sign the Dibs receipt. Hall puts his money in the rosin compartment of his violin case. I think Mulgrew put his on a chain in a money belt in his jockstrap.

  After the show, I had planned for Toni and me to go out to dinner. First, a trip in a gondola on a clear starry night. The gondola man can see we are lovers, so he sings ‘Lae That Piss Tub Dawn Bab’*…

  ≡ ‘Lay That Pistol Down, Babe’.

  It is midnight. Toni and I are at a corner table in the Restaurant Veneziana (alas, now defunct – possibly now the Plastic Pizzeria). It’s all candles and Victoriana and dusty enough without being dirty. There are chandeliers with the odd tear-drop missing and white-aproned waiters lubricated by the growing tourism are grovelling and bowing at the going rate. A guitar and mandolin are trilling through Paolo Tosti and Puccini. I send a hundred lire with a request: “Don’t play ‘Lae That Piss Tub Dawn Bab’.”

  Toni and I are talking pre-dinner nothings. We watch the dancing calligraphy of the ruby in the wine on the tablecloth, we can hear the waters lap as gondolas pass the window. Please, God, let me die now! I am seeing Toni over a bowl of nodding roses, fallen petals tell of their demise, the sickly sweet smell courts the air. The waiter has held back to allow us our billing and cooing. He now advances with the menus as a shield. He recommends moules marinieres: “Fresche sta matlina, signorina,” he tells Toni. Toni orders vitello (veal). Today, I’d have told her it was cruel; then, I was ignorant.

  “This is very old restaurant, original home of Contessa de Rocabaldi. She die in 1900, some say she poisoned.” Oh? Did she eat here? “Oh Terry, why you always talk crazy?” says my love. “Here stay Greta Garbo.” Oh? I topped up our glasses only to have the bottle taken by the sommelier, smilingly outraged at the predation on his domain. He tells us that Valpolicella was the wine of Suetonius. I asked him did he come here? But the joke misfires and he says, no, you see Suetonius died two thousand years ago.

  We were alone and eating. I looked across the roses at her and I said what I hadn’t said to a girl since 1939. “I think I love you.” She stopped eating, a moule in one hand. (There are no two-handed moules.)

  She smiled. “You think you love me?” I nodded. She raised her glass, I touched it with mine, they lingered together a moment. Then she said, “When you are sure, you tell me again.” And she elevated the glass, then sipped, her eyes on me as she drank. She called the waiter and rattled off something in Italian. He hurried to the duo which then played the ‘Valzer di Candele’, the version from the film Waterloo Bridge (with Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh). She hummed the tune, a few rose petals fell. God, this was different from Reg’s Café in Brockley! I reached out and held her hand and discovered how hard it was eating spaghetti one-handed. But what a romantic night!

  It was past midnight when the waiter brought the bill, and two minutes past when I realized I’d left my money in the dressing-room at the theatre. I explain the circumstances, he calls the manager; I explain the circumstances, he calls the police; I explain the circumstances. It ends with me leaving my silver cigarette case and my watch. They were all returned the next night when I paid the bill, the manager now all effusive with smiles. The cigarette case was empty, the bastard had smoked the lot. Like my father said, “Life is six to four against.”

  THE CARNIVAL OF VENICE

  Yes, tonight Venice is to have a carnival, the first one since 1939. Before the show, Toni and I sit at an outdoor café in the Piazza San Marco. The pigeons are wheeling in the sunset, and the light falls on the Ducal Palace and the Basilica, two different stories in stone. Around the square, beautiful buildings run cheek by jowl: soaring up is the great Bell Tower, whose doleful bells are ringing out the hour of six, sending more pigeons wheeling from their roosts. People stroll
leisurely. One looks at St Mark’s and is lost in wonder, its Byzantine-Gothic shapes catching the light to give a hologram effect. Alas, the four colossal bronze horses that had once graced some Roman quadriga were missing – still in store from the war.

  Johnny Mulgrew joins us. “Hello,” he says in stark Glaswegian tones. “So you’re going to buy me a drink?” He tells us Hall is missing again. Are we going to stay on for the carnival? Yes. I order a couple of Cognacs. May as well start the festivities.

  “Here, wee Jock, drink this. It’s awfur gude,” I said in mock-Scottish tones. Silently, Mulgrew holds it up then downs it in one, licks his lips, looks at us and grins. It doesn’t take much to make a Scotsman happy.

  ∗

  The show over, we all make for the barge which has been stocked with drinks and food for the night. Our bargee has put little coloured bulbs in our awnings. There were ‘ooos and ahhhs’ as fireworks sprinkled the night sky. All the ferries and gondolas had coloured lanterns. In the Piazza San Marco, there was a municipal band and all the people in fancy dress, some quite fantastic with masks. Some waved handheld fizzers writing graffiti in the air. Gondoliers were outsinging each other, people waved and shouted from passing boats, rockets soar from the Isola di San Giorgio and it’s a starry night!

  We open the Asti Spumante and nibble fresh-cut sandwiches. It starts off quite civilized, but gradually the drunks start to manifest themselves. A gondola passes and tosses firecrackers into our boat. Screams and yells from us as they explode like miniature machine guns.

  “We should have brought some grenades,” says Bornheim.

  “You have anything like this in England?” says Toni to Bill Hall.

  “Oh yes, Blackpool,” he says.

  We had to stave off several British soldiers trying to board us from gondolas. “Hey, you want Jig-a-Jig?” seems to be their contribution to the gaiety.