Goodbye Soldier (10 page)

“Ah,” says Mulgrew. “The gods are smiling on us.” I point out that the boat looks as though it’s about to expire. They heed the warning not. With caution, Angove and Mulgrew get into the boat. With a plank of wood, Mulgrew propels the boat to the edge of the rushes and throws out their line. It remained thrown out for an hour while Toni and I sat on the verge.

“Caught anything yet?” I called.

“Sweet FA,” says Mulgrew.

“Here, let me try,” says Angove.

Very wobbly, they stand and change places. There is a shout and Mulgrew goes through the bottom of the boat. It sinks immediately and Angove joins Mulgrew up to their waists in water. They issue forth from the water with a mixture of swearing and laughter, with mud up to their knees and great cakes of mud on their feet.

“The gods have stopped smiling,” I said.

“Christ,” says Mulgrew. “We better go back and get this lot off,” he added.

Toni clowning, Krumpendorf.

∗

Alone again, Toni wants to sunbathe. She strips down to her bathing costume; I get her to do a camp pose against the skyline.

“You no sunbathe?” said Toni.

“No, I’m still sunburnt from Grado.”

Apart from which, I was not wearing a bathing costume and the thought of stripping down to my underpants filled me with terror.

Toni wants to know more about England. I suppose it’s on the assumption that one day I might marry her. “Tell me, Terr-ee, you have what you call a Frog?”

“Frog? Ah, you mean fog. Yes.”

“All the time?”

“No, it just seems that way. No, we only get it in the winter.”

“Is it always cold?”

“No, in summer it’s very nice.”

The morning passes. We are totally alone, almost like the last people left on earth. We snog in the warm grass. Time is meaningless. In a passionate embrace, Toni suddenly says “It’s time for lunch.” I swore I’d never get that hungry! Toni dresses and we walk back to the guest house.

Chalky White is in the lounge holding a housey-housey game. I get a card and play a few games. Italians and Aus-trians alike are baffled by the language. “Number Nine, Doctors Orders, Legs Eleven, All the Sixes, Clickity Click, Kelly’s Eye.” I don’t win a thing so we go to lunch. A beaming, fat, bald Austrian in an ill-fitting suit greets us and shows us to our table. He introduces himself, “Hi ham Ludwig zer Herr Ober.” We order a couple of salads. “Tank you,” he says. He smells distantly of cod liver oil. He keeps checking the diners. “
Allesgut?
” he says and nods approval. After lunch, it’s weekly NAAFI ration.

In Jimmy Molloy’s room there’s a lot of bartering – swopping sweets and chocolate for cigarettes. There are also toothpaste and bootlaces for sale and I don’t see the connection. Why not toothpaste and potted shrimps? Or toothpaste and tinned carrots? Old debts are repaid but only after reminders.

“Come on Mulgrew, you owe me six cigarettes.”

“Six? I only borrowed five.”

“It’s with interest.”

“I have no interest,” he said and gave me five cigarettes.

We carry all our goodies back to the chalet, where lovely Bill Hall is washing socks in the sink. “NAAFI’s up,” I tell him. He drops the socks and hurries from the chalet. Mulgrew sits by the window and writes letters.

“How do you spell sophisticated?” he says.

“I don’t. I only say it.”

Mulgrew cleaning his teeth at an open window, Krumpendorf.

I spend the afternoon reading Edgar Allan Poe’s mystery stories, then have a doze. I awake at tea-time and meet Toni in the dining-room.

“Hello, Terr-ee. You like my hair?” She revolves to show a new hair style.

“Very nice,” I say. It’s a good thing to say to women.

Cream buns and tea. Lovely. “Theese make you fat, Terr-ee.” If only they would. Oh, for a few ounces of fat on my emaciated Belsen body.

That night, the show passed uneventfully except for a string on my guitar breaking in the middle of the act. Manfully, I played on the remaining five strings. After dinner, we sit in the lounge drinking coffee and listening to Bornheim play the piano. I am looking at Toni. Toni is looking at me. It’s like electricity.

“What you think?” she says.

“I think I love you,” I say. Love? I’m besotted with her!

Bornheim stops playing. “Get this,” he announces – to the tune of ‘The Girl That I Marry’, sings:

The child that I carry will have to be

Dumped on the steps of a nunnery

The man I call my own

Has turned into a poofta and smells of cologne

He polishes his fingernails, tints his hair

He’s known in the ‘dilly as Old Doris Hare

“Stead of flittin’, he sits knittin”

For a sailor who comes from Thames Ditton

I once had a lover, now he loves my brother, not me.

So much for Irving Berlin. Time for turning in. I accompany Toni to her chalet. A goodnight kiss in the shadows and I’m off to my own bed, bent double with erections. Down boy, down. Not tonight.

SUN, SNOW, SLEIGH

N
ext morning, I’m up first and it’s down boy again. Mulgrew and Hall are both still asleep, both sharing what sounds like the same snore. Hall’s laundered socks, now stiff as boards, swing gently in the breeze from the window. Ah, the poetry of an Austrian morning. I take a vigorous shower, singing boo boo boo da de dum dee dee. Ah, yes, as good as Crosby. “Spike,” it’s Mulgrew, “we’re trying to sleep.”

“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

N
ext 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?