Memoirs 06 - Peace Work Read online

  “What?” I said. “How dare you try and sleep when I’m singing.”

  I’m looking forward to breakfast and backward to sleep (Eh?). I leave the slumbering duo and make for Toni’s chalet. I tap on the door. “It’s me, Toni. I’m coming in.” There are shrieks of No! No! from Toni. I push the door ajar and see Toni and her companions clutching towels to hide their nudity.

  “I come very quickly,” she giggles.

  Breakfast is very British: eggs and bacon. Toni joins me halfway through. “You are very naughty boy,” she says, drawing to the table. She must have a coffee, she can’t start the day without one. Toni sips it with a look of ecstasy on her face. What shall we do today? Today she can’t see me, she has lots of washing and letters to write. My problems are solved! The Charabong will take those interested to the Consul Bhan, a skiing resort. Great!

  We pile on the Charabong which threads its way up a mountain, or was it a hill? That’s a point: at what height does a hill become a mountain? The sun is shining ferociously, even after we reach the snow line. We are met by a sergeant ski instructor. He fixes us up with skis and leaves us to it. So, it’s fun on the slopes. There must be a world record for falling over, and I hold it. I strip to the waist – even in the snow, I’m perspiring. I rub my body with snow and feel exhilarated. The sergeant makes some tea for us in the out-of-season café. I notice lying among the trees spent cartridge shells. The sergeant tells us that this used to be a training depot for German ski troops. “The lot that done Narvik trained here,” he says.

  The afternoon passes with us falling down. Finally the sergeant lends us a two-man sleigh. “This is more like it,” says Bornheim. The afternoon passes with us sliding down the mountain. No ski lift here, you have to schlep back up on foot. Plenty of tumbles on the overloaded sleigh.

  “It was never meant for so many,” shouts Angove as five of us hurtle down into a tree. Great flurries of snow and tumbling bodies – sun, snow, sleigh, wonderful!

  At six o’clock, Lieutenant Priest reminds us there’s a show to do. I keep forgetting the show is the reason we are having all this fun. We arrive back sunburnt and shagged out, not looking forward to the show. A quick tea and a slice of cake, I collect my guitar and hurry to the waiting Charabong.

  “Terr-ee! You all sunburn,” says Toni. I told her that all day I’d missed her and longed for her on skis next to me with the wind blowing through our hair as we raced down the mountain.

  I stand up in the bus and start to declaim for all to hear, “What a fool I was to leave you, darling, to do the laundry, while I, a young Celtic god, was coursing down the white mountain in a rapture of speed, wind and other things.” I kneel down and start kissing her arm. “Oh, forgive me, my beloved, my little laundress. It will never happen again.” Toni is laughing with embarrassment and the cast give me a round of applause. Greta Weingarten is saying have we noticed how clean Austria is after Italy. I agree with her. “I’ll say this for Hitler: I bet before he shot himself he put on clean underpants!”

  In the dressing-room, Hall and Mulgrew get into an argument about women.

  “I look for women with experience,” says Hall. “I choose women who make the act of love last.”

  Mulgrew guffaws. “Bloody hell,” he says. “Some of the old boilers I’ve seen you with don’t look like they’d last the walk home.”

  “Looks aren’t everything,” intones Hall. “I mean, most of these young tarts – show ‘em a prick and they’d faint.”

  Mulgrew is laughing. “No wonder. When I saw yours, I nearly fainted. For a start, it’s got a bend in it.”

  “It’s not a bend. It’s a slight curve,” says Hall.

  “Curve?” laughs Mulgrew, “it nearly goes round corners.”

  I was crying with laughter. Barrack-room humour, there’s nothing quite like it.

  After the show Major Hardacre, the Town Major, comes backstage with two young officers. They congratulate us over the show. “It was jolly good.” They seem interested in the girls whom the Major has a slight tendency to handle. He’s very interested in Toni, my Toni. He shakes her hand and holds it overlong. He’d better watch out or I’ll have his Hardacre on a slab, sliced up like salami and stuffed up his married quarters! God, I was jealous! In love and jealous, it was like being on the rack.

  After dinner, that night, we have a dance. The trio, plus Bornheim on the accordion, supply the music. Toni dances with Maxie. He dances splay-legged, as though he has messed himself. Toni, she was so doll-like. Strange – when I was a boy in India, up to the age of eight I liked dolls. My father was a worried man. Was it Toni’s doll-like image that attracted me to her? Forward the resident analyst. I have the last waltz with Toni. Bornheim plays the ‘Valzer di Candele’. He knows that it’s ‘our tune’. I hold Toni close and the room seems to go round and round – very difficult for a square room.

  By midnight, the dance had broken up. Toni and I went and sat on a bench in the neglected rose garden. (Today’s Special, Neglected Roses five shillings a bunch.) We talked about each other. Were we sure we were in love? The answer seemed to be yes. So, what to do? Do we get engaged? I think if I had asked her, she would have said yes. You see, I’d never thought about marriage. I was a day-by-day person. If at the end of day everything was OK, then we were set fair for tomorrow. Why ruin it by planning, say, six months ahead? I tell you, whoever planned my head should have got six months. I was a woolly thinker. Toni and I would go on for ever; there was no end to the tour, we would ride in the Charabong eternally and never grow old…

  BLOODY AWFUL

  Next day, after breakfast, it’s a real hot day. I tell Toni we must try and get a swim in the Worthersee. We take our costumes and make for the lake. But everywhere it’s reeds, reeds, reeds and where there is access, it’s mud, mud, mud. So, we settle for a sunbathe. Oh, the heat. Toni so close, covered in oil – it’s almost frying her. “Terr-ee, some more oil on my back, please.” So Terree obliges, taking his time to rub the oil on her satin skin. Ohhhh, the heat. Ohhhh, the oil. God, we all need a button on us that says SEX ON-OFF. Right now, I’m fumbling for the off switch. Through the lazy afternoon we talk with our eyes closed, sweet nothings that would bore any but us. Being in love, everything seems important. Small things. God, why did I have a small thing?

  “What’s going on here?” I open one eye to see Bornheim and Mulgrew; the latter, who hasn’t learned his lesson, is holding a fishing rod. “You know there’s no mixed bathing allowed in the long grass,” he says.

  “Go away, Mulgrew. Weren’t you ever young?”

  “Yes,” he says. “It was on a Thursday.”

  It is tea-time, so we give in and the four of us head back to the guest house. I need a shower to get the oil off and a cold one to reduce the swelling. Toni came down to tea in an all-white dress to show off her suntan, and lovely she looked.

  The show that night was pretty hysterical. A lone drunk in the middle of the hall started to shout out, “It’s bloody awful, bloody awful.” It took a time to evict him. Then, in the second half he obviously somehow got back in because he shouted from the gallery, “It’s still bloody awful, bloody awful.” Again he was thrown out, only to reappear through a front row fire exit direct from the street. “It’s bloody awful from here, as well,” he shouted, before doing a bunk. It caused great laughter in the audience and the cast. It wasn’t the last of him, my God. As we were about to drive back to the billets, he was thumping on the sides of the Charabong, “You’re all bloody awful, bloody awful.” Bill Hall rolled down a window and blew a thunderous saliva-draped raspberry at him, causing howls of glee in the truck.

  “Perhaps we are bloody awful,” said Bornheim. “I mean, how many of us would a West End audience come to see?” he went on. “I mean, they’d pay to see the Bill Hall Trio. But the rest of us?”

  This started a real row till we got to the hotel. Everybody was suddenly in star class. Of course the West End audiences would pay to see Chalky White hitting peop
le, etc., etc. There was a lot of laughter as each artiste defended himself against the ‘bloody awful’ label. The fact is none of them were ever heard of again.

  At dinner, the argument breaks out again. When Bornheim plays the piano, a shout of ‘Bloody awful’ goes up. From then on, no one could make a move without a shout of ‘Here comes bloody awful’. The Italian artistes couldn’t get the gist of it. But when they did, they too took up the cry. Toni asked me with a perfectly straight face, “Tell me, Terr-ee. We are bludy awful, yes?”

  ∗

  The next morning broke sunny and warm. Across the road from us was a little Austrian beerhouse, so at lunchtime Bornheim and I toddled over and sat outside. We ordered a bottle of white wine and some cheese, then another bottle of white wine. Two Austrians in lederhosen with overmuscled legs and blue staring eyes asked us to join them for a ‘drink of zer Schnapps’ and my God we got pie-eyed. We wobbled back to our chalets. I was sick and crashed out groaning on the bed. Toni is horrified, I’ve never been drunk before. She sees the drunken wretch and says, “Terr-ee, you, you, bludy awful,” bursts into tears and runs out. I stumbled after her and crashed to the floor where I was sick yet again. I now looked like a walking Irish stew on legs. By evening I was coming to and drank a lot of black coffee, brought in by faithful Mulgrew who knew drunkenness. That night on stage I was bloody awful. I muffed the announcements, got the wrong intros and generally buggered up the act. But we still went down well.

  “Just bloody luck,” said Bill Hall.

  “What did you get pissed for?” said Lieutenant Priest. “About thirty Schillings,” I said. “We were very economical.”

  ∗

  The weather stays divine. Up the road at the Worthersee riviera Toni and I hire a rowboat and take a packed lunch. I row to the middle of the lake. It’s one of those boats with a lounging double seat in the stern, so we snog while the boat drifts and drifts and drifts…Let it drift for ever, for we are lovers and the hands of the clock stopped the moment we met. We live in a time capsule called now. We can only think of each other. It is young and true love. The waters lapped the sides, lake birds flew hither and thither to their secret places and the day lay on us like a diaphanous dream…

  Wake up, wake up! The boat is leaking. Blast, yes, there’s three inches of water in the bottom. So I row the love wagon back to the boathouse and point out to the Austrian man what has happened. He just laughed and gave us half our money back. We walked back down the dusty road and arrived home for tea. Toni is giggling because somehow I have managed to wet the seat of my trousers, which looks like a giant ink stain. I hang my shirt out to cover it but that’s wet as well. The hell with it! Wild poppies grow by the wayside. I pick some for Toni. Alas, the poor things start to die within a few minutes. Why can’t we leave nature alone? Toni takes a photo of me. She wants me to turn my back to the camera. I refuse.

  Spike Milligan, Krumpendorf. Quite a long way from where the Pope lives.

  Lieutenant Priest seeks me out. Tomorrow Bill Hall and I are to report to Villach Demob Camp to be issued with civilian clothes, how exciting! Next morning a 15 cwt truck takes us to the depot. Giant sheds loaded with military gear. We hand in our papers and discharge sheets, then we are given the choice of three suits – a grey double-breasted pinstripe suit, a dark blue ditto or a sports jacket and flannels. This photograph shows us with our chosen clobber.

  Goodbye Soldier! Bill Hall, unknown twit and Spike.

  I had chosen clothes three times too large for me and Hall had chosen some three sizes too small. The distributing sergeant was pretty baffled. We duly signed our names and walked out. England’s heroes were now free men. No more ‘yes, sir, no, sir’, no more parades. Back at the guest house, we have our first meal as civilians. As I remember it was spaghetti.

  Milligan and Hall, their first meal as civilians.

  ∗

  We had one more demob appointment. That was with the Army MO. This turns out to be a watery-eyed, red-nosed lout who was to medicine what Giotto was to fruit bottling. “It’s got you down here as B1,” he says.

  “That’s right, I was downgraded at a medical board.”

  “It says ‘battle fatigue’.”

  “Yes. ‘Battle fatigue, anxiety state, chronic’.”

  “Yes, but you’re over it now, aren’t you?”

  “No, I still feel tired.”

  “So, I’ll put you down as A1.”

  “Not unless I’m upgraded by a medical board.”

  “Oh, all right. Bi.”

  He then asks me if my eyesight is all right.

  “As far as I know.”

  “You can see me, can’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s all right.”

  It ended with him signing a couple of sheets of paper and showing me the door. Why didn’t he show me the window? It was a nice view. To give you an idea of the creep, here is his signature.

  That was it. I was a civilian and B1.

  ∗

  Ah, Sunday, day of rest and something. On Monday we will travel to Graz and do the show. In the morning I lie abed smoking.

  “What’s it feel like to be a civvy?” says Mulgrew.

  “Well, I’ve felt myself and it feels fine.”

  “Lucky bugger. I’ve still got two months to go,” he said, coughing his lungs up.

  “You sound as if you’re going now.”

  Bill Hall stirs. “Wot’s the time?”

  I tell him, “It’s time you bought a bloody watch.”

  Lying in bed, Hall looks like an activated bundle of rags. Poor Bill – he, too, had been to the creep MO, who had passed him out as A1. He didn’t know it at the time but he had tuberculosis, which would one day kill him. So much for bloody Army doctors.

  I take a shower and sing through the cascading waters. “Boo boo da de dum, can it be the trees that fill the breeze with rare and magic perfume?” I sing. What a waste, singing in the shower. I should be with Tommy Dorsey or Harry James.

  Mid-morning, Hall, Mulgrew and I agree to give a concert in the lounge. It is much enjoyed by the hotel staff. All blue-eyed, blond, yodelling Austrians, who have been starved of jazz during the Hitler regime. They have a request. Can we play ‘Lay That Pistol Down Babe’? Oh, Christ, liberation had reached Austria. To appease them we play it. Hall plays it deliberately out of tune. “I’ll teach the bastards,” he says, sotto voce con espressione. They applaud wildly and ask for it again!! Hall can’t believe it. “They must have cloth ears,” he says and launches into ‘Deutschland Uber Alles’ as a foxtrot. “Take your partners for the National Anthem,” he says. Hitler must have turned in his grave.

  HITLER:

  No, I’m not. I’m still shovelling shit and salt in Siberia.

  No sign of Toni so far, then Greta tells me she’s in bed with tummy trouble. I go up to her room. She’s asleep, but awakes as I come in. “What’s the matter, Toni?”

  She is perspiring and looks very flushed. “I think I eat something wrong,” she says. “All night I be sick.” Oh dear, can I get her anything on a tray like the head of John the Baptist? “No, I just want sleep,” she says in a tiny voice. So, I leave her.

  That afternoon, Lieutenant Priest has arranged a picture show just for us. We all go to the Garrison Cinema in Klagen-furt to see the film Laura, with George Sanders and Clifton Webb. It has that wonderful theme song ‘Laura’, after which I would one day name my daughter. We are admitted free under the banner of CSE. The cinema is empty, so we do a lot of barracking.

  “Watch it, darling, ‘ees going ter murder yes,” etc. “ee wants to have it away with you, darlin’.”

  “Look out, mister, watch yer ring! He’s a poof!” Having destroyed the film, we return home like well-pleased vandals.

  Tea is waiting and Toni is up and dressed, she feels a lot better. No, she won’t eat anything except a cup of coffee, so I get her a cup of coffee to eat. I light up my after-dinner fag and pollute the air. Toni flaps her han
d. “Oh, Terr-ee, why you smoke?” Doesn’t she know that Humphrey Bogart never appears in a film without smoking? We spend the evening playing ludo with small bets on the side. Suddenly, I feel sick. It’s the same as Toni. Soon, I have both ends going. I take to my bed and only drink water. That night, I have a temperature. What a drag! I fall into a feverish sleep.

  GRAZ

  GRAZ

  Next morning, I’m still discharging both ends. Wrapped in a blanket, doused with Aspros, I board the Charabong.

  “How you feel, Terree,” says Toni.

  “Terrible.”

  I semi-doze all the way to Graz, showing no interest in food or drink. When we arrive in Graz, I hurriedly book in and make for my room. It’s a lovely hotel with double glazing and double doors to the room, so it’s very quiet except for the noise of me going both ends. I take a hot bath and take to my sick bed. I get visits from everyone. Do I need a doctor? I say, no, a mortician. Will I be doing the show tomorrow? Not bloody likely. Bornheim will have to take my place on the squeeze box; I am delirious. Toni visits me and tells me she loves me. That’s no bloody good. I love her too, but I’ve still got the shits. Can she hurry and leave the room as something explosive is coming on. I fall into a deep sleep. I awake in the wee hours to do a wee. I’m dripping with sweat. What’s the time? 3 a.m. I take a swig at my half-bottle of whisky. When I awake in the morning, I seem to have broken the back of it – it feels as if I’ve also broken its legs and arms. Twenty-four hours had passed away but I hadn’t. In two days I’m back to my normal, healthy, skinny, self. How did the act go with Bornheim deputizing for me? It was great! Curses. So I rejoin the fold.

  The show is at the Theatre Hapsburg, a wonderful, small intimate theatre – one mass of gilded carvings of cherubim. This night the trio get rapturous applause from a mixed audience of Austrians and soldiers. Hall is stunned.