Memoires 05 (1985) - Where Have All The Bullets Gone Page 6

  “Hello, down there.” The Colonel’s red face is at the grilled Moorish window, his face looking equally grilled. We must come up, tea is being served. A long refectory table laden with salads and a magnificent bronze samovar. Our every whim is waited on slavishly by the little Italian. “They’re a dying breed,” says Startling Grope. (He was right. The Iti died the day after we left.) The officers are slopping down one Alexander after another and we all repair to the beach again; Captain Clarke in a one-piece suit that was out of date when Captain Webb swam the channel, and the Colonel in a pair of bathing drawers of ‘the briefest gist’. He plunges in, comes out, and goes up to bed. Captain Clarke strikes out to sea so far that the current gradually carries him out of sight round the headland. He is not shouting ‘help’ but just in case we shout “Goodbye, sir.” He disappears. Should we inform the life-guards? No, there’s plenty more like him. Hours later he returned overland via the Villa Fondalillo some three miles away. When the Italian flunkey opened the door, a shagged-out Captain Clarke fell into the house, but at least he had two wet legs and a body to match.

  Eventide and we are returning; the RAF boat waits at the mole. The Colonel has organized it perfectly, except for falling in the sea again. “Homeward bound, eh?” says the Captain, and leads our officers away for drinkypoos. We of the lower order stay on deck with buggerallpoos. Ischia fades into the crepuscular evening and Naples looms. We dock.

  “You drive, Terence,” says Colonel S. Singing all the while, we are back at Maddaloni in just over the hour and under the weather. It was a memorable day. Even as I type this, I can see that splendid sunlight on that warm azure sea in a time capsule that will never come again.

  Len and I are bedding down for the night. “He must have drunk ten bottles of wine, two of Strega and two of brandy,”

  Len said. “You’ll see, when he goes it will be his liver or his bladder.” He was wrong: in 1970 Stanley died of heart failure during an operation for piles. But for piles, Stanley would be alive today, doing ten years for interfering with little boys.

  One of them could have been me. I speak with experience.

  . You see that evening on our return from Ischia, I drove Stanley back to his billet and he put his hand up my shorts. I thought, this could mean promotion for me, but no, I said “Look here, sir, fuck off…sir.” He is sorry. It will never happen again.

  Len falls about laughing. “Cor, fancy, there’s men up the line dying and down here the Colonels are trying to grab yer goolies.” I reminded him it was better than dying. “Let’s face it, would you rather be fucked or killed?”

  Ars Gratia Artist

  I have entered an Art Contest, and I win!

  Nude winner of art contest

  The prize is given me by a new man, Major Rodes of the Highland Light Infantry. He too is gay, and has just returned from some daring deed behind the enemy lines, like squeezing partisans’ balls under fire. Now he is out of the line as he has developed a hernia (did he use a dark room?) and he is billeted with us awaiting an operation. This has been delayed by Brigadier Henry Woods who is a ‘rupture expert’ and wants to get the Major the right hospital and the right surgeon. So, I receive my prize from a ruptured major who was a professional artist in Civvy Street! Did he chalk the pavements? He laughs not. My drawing is very good, had I done any artistic training? I told him I’d done a bit in Goldsmith’s College. He said never mind her, would I like to do murals? Had I ever done any murals? Yes, I did ‘All Coppers are Bastards’ outside the Lady Flo’ Institute, Deptford, 1936. He shows me a drawing of Hyde Park Corner in high Victorian days. He wants to do an enlargement on the wall of the Officers’ Mess. “There’ll be something in it for you,” he says. OK, I’ll do it. Murals; mean swines, anything to save buying wallpaper. Evenings I don my denims and start work.

  I square off the wall and then draw the enlargements.

  Officers’ Mess Maddaloni on a Bad Day, 1944

  Military supplies showing liver cripplers, Maddaloni, 1944

  To my delight it comes very easily. It means working late after the Officers’ Mess closes, but in lieu I’m given time off in the mornings. I am praised. “My word, you are talented, Terence,” says Stanley, Sir. “You play the trumpet and guitar and you can paint. Is there anything you can’t do?” Yes, sir, Sheila Frances.

  The Colonel is to do a tour of the front lines. Would I like to come too? The front line? Does he think I’m mad? He does. No sir, my days of sitting in an OP trench full of water with 88s air bursting over your head and your bottle bursting underneath are over. “Goodbye, good luck, God be with you, but not me.”

  O2E is womanless, save for tall lovely ATS Captain Thelma Oxnevad, six foot with sparkling blue eyes and certain things…We like each other, but alas, she is an officer and a gentleman and I am a gunner, the stuff that gutters are made of.

  “No Spike, I can’t walk out with you.”

  I don’t want her to walk out, I want her to walk into my bedroom. No, if Brigadier Henry Woods heard this, she’d be cashiered and I’d be shot. I tell her that’s OK with me. I tell her that when we take our clothes off she wouldn’t be able to tell the gunner from the Captain! Nay nay nay. When I dance with her, she is three inches taller. I explain that lying down we will both be the same height. Even as I dance with her, I can feel the eyes of other officers on me, jealous with rage. Like Major Rodes, he wants to dance with me. Thelma gives me hope.

  “Your lust will soon be allayed Spike, a consignment of Virgin ATS are to be posted here.”

  Meantime I still try to home in on Sheila Frances. She jives in! Yes, she will meet me. She’ll never regret it! With toe in my Prime and all parts in Grand Prix order. Ah yes, She’ll love my Grand Prix. 8 o’clock outside the 604 ATS Company HQ Caserta.

  I am there, beautiful, radiating Brasso, Blanco, Brylcreem and Brio, with all my things revolving at high speed. I am there dead on 8 o’clock, I am also there dead on at half-past eight, I am also dead on there at nine, and I am there dead on again at nine-thirty, and I went on to be dead on at ten o’clock. Where was she, my little darling dirty rotten little tart, letting me and it down! Today I wonder, was I at the right address? Somewhere in the street of Caserta is a grey-haired old lady in a ragged ATS uniform still waiting for it.

  I withdraw to the Forces Canteen in the High Street and am found drinking tea, eating a sandwich and finding consolation watching the wobbling bum of the manageress. Next Hay Major Rodes and his rupture hear of my adventure. “So your little soldier tart didn’t show, eh?” He hands me a drawing.

  Band Biz

  We want to expand the band. We would like a string section. There is a fine fiddler, one Corporal Spaldo. At concerts he plays Montés’ Czardas. Would he like to play in our band? He shudders. No, not for him the nigger rhythm music. There is a postscript to this tale.

  Many years after the war I was in a night club. The cabaret is supplied by a ‘Krazy Kaper’ Band. I notice a violinist, wearing a large ginger wig and beard, a football jersey, a kilt with a whitewash brush for a sporran, fishnet stockings and high heel shoes. They play ‘Does chewing gum leave its flavour on the bedpost over night’. It’s Spaldo! I couldn’t resist it, I went over and said, “Changed your mind, eh?”

  So my lotus days in the band continued. We were paid three hundred lire a gig, my trumpet solos working out at a penny a time. Our finances were organized by Welfare Officer Major Bloore. He sometimes writes to me from the Cayman Islands.

  Now I am moved from Filing to the Welfare Office, under the eye of Private Eddie Edwards.

  Pte. E. Edwards Posed with a soft filter, facing Nor’ East and lightly oiled

  I am to draw posters for the current films being shown. My first one is Rita Hayworth. No, I’m not doing it right, says Major Rodes, try again. Rita Hayworth II, no, it’s not right. Rita Hayworth III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, no, I just can’t get Rita Hayworth right for West of Pecos; I can’t even get her right for East, North or South of Pecos.
/>
  “Sir, I didn’t join the army to draw a regiment of Hay-worths. I want out!”

  “You fool, you little khaki fool,” losing a golden opportunity to become the great artist he could make me. The Major stamps off in a kilt-swinging rage.

  “He’s very temperamental,” says Eddie.

  “I think he’s in the change,” I reply. “And his truss must be upside down.”

  The Aquarium Club

  This is to be a new officers’ drinking club. The venue is a farmhouse just outside the town.

  My penance is to do more murals. This time sea life. The Major drives me to the site. There are no men on the farm. “Tutti nella Armata.” At the moment they were all planting cabbages in Sussex; among them Mario and Franco who were to stay on to revolutionize our eating habits with their trattorias. Only the mother and the daughter Maria were left (in Italy all daughters not called mothers are Marias). She is a rough peasant beauty, five foot seven inches, tall for an Italian, and very tall for a dwarf. She has large brown expressive legs and eyes, tousled black hair and brown satin skin. (Arrrghhh!) Her mother, pardon me, looked like a bundle of oily rags ready for sorting. She seemed ever fearful of her daughter being screwed, whereas I wasn’t worried at all. They were poor and leasing out a few rooms was salvation to them. She shows us two upstairs rooms. As Maria walked up the stairs, I made a note of her shapely bottom, while the Major made a note of mine. The rooms were being painted light marine blue by defaulters. Poor devils, here they had come to face Hitler, and instead they’re stripping and painting walls, just like Hitler did twenty years ago. “No wonder he went fucking mad,” they said. On the morrow I was to apply my skills; very nice, no filing, and away from the Maddening Thomas Hardy.

  A Red Beard and a Beret

  By coincidence a real Royal Academician has joined our happy band. George Lambourne, one of Augustus John’s many sons, and the image of him. He brings his talents and a batch of Welfare painters to ‘tart up’ our drab interiors.

  I met him when I attended one of his lectures. He was too good to miss. I made a point of taking him to dinner at Aldo’s Cafe. Talk was of painting. So, I’m doing murals. Did I go to art school? He is a bit puzzled by my scatty way of jumping from one subject to another like Queen Elizabeth the First, but I must have made an impression. Bear witness to mention in his diary.

  I remember George pouring me a glass of red wine, and feeling the glow of his personality. A man of depth, character, talent and brains. Who were his favourite painters? He reels off a mixture — Giotto, Rubens, Boudin, Van Gogh. What about me?

  “What do you like drawing, Spike?”

  I told him. “Pay.”

  Talking about Turner’s sunsets: “You never see a sunset like that,” I said. “No,” said George, “but don’t you wish you did!”

  George died a few years ago. The world is a colder place.

  The Murals

  I’m there on the plank drawing enlarged fish, octopus, squid, dolphins and crabs; thank God I’ve never had them as bad. Maria drops in to see how I’m faring; there’s a bit of flirting; she brings me figs, oranges, grapes. I ask her if she has a relative in Pompeii. We are repeatedly interrupted by the croaking voice of her mother — “MARIAAAAAAAAA DOVE VI” — accompanied by sudden rushes into the room. Suspicious, yet disappointed. One arrives at the conclusion that the moment an Italian girl isn’t visible to her parents she’s screwing.

  Their farm was a tumbledown affair, and the farm dog, Neroni, a mongrel, was a sad sight, tethered on a piece of rope that only allowed him three paces, nothing more or less than a hairy burglar alarm. The forecourt was a mess of stabling, two white longhorn oxen, a few bundles of silage, scattered farm tools and a wooden plough (in 1944!), a few chickens and goats, the latter given to the desertification of Italy. Poor Neroni, whenever I approached he would snarl and bark like crazy, but when close to, he cowered and whimpered. I got him a longer piece of rope. I stroked him, something no one had ever done before. He licked my face. I brought him some food which he wolfed down. I often think of him. Those days were among the best I’d ever have. At morning I’d breakfast and then make my way to the farm down a dusty lane. The landscape was not unlike Aries at the time of Van Gogh. I’d work through the mornings. I brought the mother some tea, sugar and tins of bully beef. She wept and kissed my hand. Never mind that, what about a screw with Maria!

  By the first week in October I had completed the murals at the Aquarium Club. I arranged to finish mid-morning so I could sneak the rest of the day off. I pack up my pots of paint, wash out the brushes. Tomorrow I will steal another day off when I come to collect them. Goodbye Maria, Momma and Neroni. I walk back by the dusty road and pass a goat flock. A large she-goat is about to deliver. The goat herder, a boy of fourteen, is stroking her and saying “Piano, piano.” Why did a goat need a piano at this particular time? Finally the little hooves start to protrude. The boy, with consummate skill, takes the heels and pulls the kid clear, then repeats it on the twin, alley opp! The little kids, shiny and shivery, lie still as their mother licks them. In minutes they are standing on jellified legs; seconds later they are at the teat sucking vigorously. It was all miraculous in its way, as moving as a Beethoven Quartet — now that needs a piano!

  Il Bagno

  October is still warm, the waters call. At the rear of the Great Palace at Caserta is a great cascading water course, Bacino Grande e Caserta.

  Caserta — Parco — Reale — Bagno di Atteone

  The faded illustration I include, as it was bought on this very day. Ah, those marble water gardens, cascades gush over Diana of the Chase, poor Atteone being attacked by hounds. How is he supposed to obtain his romantic ends with gallons of algae-ridden water cascading over him and dogs snapping at his balls?

  This green sward where the Bourbons once sported has now been given over to the Allied soldiery and wham bam, it’s become a swimming pool. Hundreds of leaping, diving, splashing, plunging, coughing, spitting loonies are churning the waters. NAAFI stalls have mushroomed, lemonade, ice-cream, cakes, tea are all on tap. We have created Jerusalem in Italy’s pleasant land. Along with the O2E Cook House staff, I am in there somewhere, witness following photographs.

  Tell me what’s clever about: “Who can hold their breath under water longest? — winner gets 20 lire.” Believe me, some of them nearly died in the attempt. This was the sort of stuff submariners dreaded, yet here we were doing it for 20 lire! We swam until sunset or death, then repaired to the American Red Cross cinema in the High Street.

  It was a Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland film with the ‘Hey, why don’t we put on a show’ crap. What had appeared to be a barn suddenly becomes the Carnegie Hall with six musicians sounding like a hundred and twenty; an unknown milkman, played by José Iturbi, plays Hungarian Rhapsody, tap danced by three hundred girls; Mickey Rooney tap dances, sings, plays the drums, the trombone, the piano, the fridge, the miracle of loaves and fishes, and then, for reasons only known to God, they all start to march towards the camera. Will Gracie appear? No, they all sing God Bless America, FDR and the Chase Manhattan Bank.

  What an exciting life we were leading.

  American Red Cross Cinema and Lamppost

  The Prodigal Returns

  Stanley Sir is back from the front (how’s that?). He’s heard that I’ve finished the Aquarium Club. “Major Rodes is very pleased.” So he should be, he didn’t have to do it. Stanley Sir points to the map of his tour. I was here, here and here. Not at the same time, surely. We were shelled here, and a German plane strafed us here. I told you not to play with those boys up the road.

  ‘Wedding Bells are Ringing for Mary but not for Mary and Me’ (popular song, circa 1938)

  Brigadier Henry Woods is in love! Who is she that will marry this World War I Worrier at the age of 104? Let Milligan tell all.

  The story starts in Humphrey Bogart country, North Africa, land of the Bedouin, the Tuareg, the Clap. After the Torch landings, Henry Woods and his ga
llant band of clerks dash in and seize the offices, to assist the bureaucracy. He hires two sweaty blue-chinned Algerian Arabs and a French colonial girl, Mademoiselle Ding. They had all worked for Admiral Darlan before his assassination. Now they would work for Brigadier Woods before his assassination. The trio all speak fluent French and Arabic. When they move to Italy they come to speak to any Italians that spoke Arabic. By now Henry has fallen in love with Mademoiselle Ding! He proposes, she accepts. Soon they usher forth from the portals of St Michael’s Maddaloni. A guard of honour, clerks holding pens, form a bridal arch, the bells ring out, and the Honeymoon? Largo Como! There the happy couple dwell in bliss. But what’s this? One day Henry arises and what’s this? The bird has flown. “L’oiseau est partie.” Fancy, here in this miserable backwater Maddaloni, the Neasden of Italy, deceit and despair, he has been cuckolded! How? Well, one of the blue-chinned Algerians had a few months back asked for permission to visit his relatives in Paris, people like Laval, Petain, etc., so with all found paid and a khaki handshake, he departs. Could he be the ‘other’ man? Henry is suspicious. He sends Major Rodes and his hernia (yes, they still haven’t found the right doctor) to seek and kill. It is all as exciting as a B movie.

  Algerian Sheik Sweeps Brigadier’s Wife From Under Nose of Husband

  Major Rodes’ search leads him to Paris, and success. There at a table for deux, he finds Mademoiselle Ding and the Arab. Ah, if only the Sun could have got the story.

  ENGLISH BRIGADIER MARRIES FRENCH ALGERIAN THIRTY YEARS YOUNGER