Peace Work (21 page)

“Good morning, little lover boy,” says Mulgrew in the middle of shaving; “naughty, naughty, naughty,” wagging a finger like some old crone at the guillotine.

Soon my night of bliss will be all round the company. He tells me that Jimmy Molloy is holding housey-housey in the lounge at eleven o’clock. Right, I’ll try me luck. After breakfast we all settle down with our little cards. It’s twenty lire a go and there’s about fifteen of us. Jimmy starts calling, “Clickety click, sixty-six, Doctor’s Orders, number nine, Legs Eleven, number eleven and another little dip.” I played until lunchtime and didn’t win a bloody thing. Mulgrew comes down for the last round and wins five hundred lire! And, lo, he falleth in the shit and cometh up smelling of roses.

Toni missed breakfast and I missed Toni. She makes an appearance at lunchtime. There’s a knowing look between us that echoes last night. “I sleep so longgg,” she says; then, in a quieter voice, “Oh, you terrible man, tsu, tsu tsu.” And then a wicked smile. She holds out her tiny hand and leads me like a lost sheep to the lunch table.

“You win money?” she says.

“No, I’m not lucky; I’m
never
lucky.”

I remembered that the last time I won anything was in Poona in the mid-twenties: I had drawn a horse called Brienz in a Derby sweepstake and won seventy-five rupees. I never forget the wondrousjoy of having enough money to go and buy several boxes of lead soldiers in the Poona bazaar. What golden days they were, bursting with sun and quietude. Do I have any idea as to what to do this afternoon? Yes, Toni. I’m going to have a good night’s sleep! After my night as Casanova, I was knackered. She gives me an impish smile then holds her hand over it, a peculiarity of hers. OK, will I phone her when I wake up? If I’m strong enough. I doze through the long hot afternoon, interrupted once by Mulgrew.

“Shagged out, eh?”

“Yes, Mulgrew. Shagged out.”

“I bet it’s cleared all that custard off your chest,” he says.

Go away, Mulgrew, go a
long, long
way away. Go and play on a cliff edge. God, it was lovely last night – overlong, but lovely. Would it always be like this? If so, I must go on a course of vitamins. The sleep restores me to my normal febrile self; in future, I must do it less.

Enter a Bill Hall rampant on a field of khaki. “You seen Mulgrew?”

“Yes.”

“Well, tell us where he is for Christ’s sake.”

OK, for His sake, I think Mulgrew is in the wine bar next door, spending my hard-earned money. Hall lingers, then says, “Can I borrow some fags?” How many? “Have you got a packet?” I tell him no, the last time I caught a packet was in North Africa. Hall doesn’t laugh at joke. I lend him a packet of twenty Passing Cloud. He’s never seen this brand before and turns the packet round and round. “Where you get these?” he says, taking one from the packet. My parents send them. “I never see ‘em before’ and I’ll never see them again. He takes one out and starts patting his pockets.”

“Ave you got a match?” he says. Get on my back, Hall, and I’ll carry you around. “Ave you heard about Chalky White?” he says. No, I can’t wait to hear. Chalky White has assaulted an Italian civilian and is in prison.

“That’s a splendid setting for him,” I said.

Apparently, Lieutenant Priest is at the prison now with the man from the British Consulate, trying to get him released. With that exciting news, Hall, rampant on a field of khaki, is gone. I phone Toni: what is she doing? She is doing some mending. Do I need anything mended or buttons sewn? No, but my underpants need a transplant. Joke. She doesn’t laugh at joke. No no no, I mustn’t come up. It will distract her. What am I doing? I tell her, recovering. She’ll see me in the Charabong. By Mulgrew’s bed are a few well-worn magazines –
Titbits, Lilliput
and
Picture Post
. I thumb through them all; particularly poignant is a German doctor’s description of conditions for war refugees in Europe. Even under Allied administration many are starving, people are still being moved around in cattle trucks. The doctor has attended the birth of a child to a starving woman. It made you realize the war wasn’t over; a war is never over, there is just an interval. In
Lilliput
, there’s a story referring to a death mask taken from a girl who committed suicide by drowning in the Seine. The amazing part of her death mask is that she is smiling. How do you do that when you are inhaling a river?

Towards show-time, I start to feel shivery. Am I sickening? Some people had said so. By the time the show was over that night I knew I had a temperature. I don’t have any dinner; I take to my bed and douse myself with the magic medicine, aspirins. I start to sweat. Toni brings me up a hot cup of tea which I lace with Mulgrew’s whisky.

“You wouldn’t deny a sick man a nip,” I said.

“Not too much,” he cautions, “it’s bad for me.”

My temperature stays up. That night I’m a bit delirious and I sweat like a pig. Lieutenant Priest visits me.

“How are we this morning?”

“Well, this part of ‘we’ feels bloody awful.”

“Have you got a temperature?”

“Yes.”

“Can you manage the show tonight?”

“No, but I can manage to stay in bed.”

“OK, we’ll get Bornheim to dep. for you. I’ll leave you to make a will,” he says grinning, and departs.

Through the day I doze and sweat. Toni ministers to me, bringing up hot soup and drinks.

“I hope to Christ it’s nothing catching,” says Mulgrew.

“So do I,” I say with a fit of sneezing.

“That’s it, spread it all round the bloody room.”

I was doing my best to.

That night my temperature goes up again and I feel like death. Alas, it’s not forthcoming. Next day Priest says I should be in hospital. Oh, no, not that – not a military hospital with bedpans and bottles. Toni says she will get her doctor to come. At midday he arrives and does all the ‘Say, ah’, the listening to the chest, the back tapping to see if you’re hollow. He presses his fingers into my stomach displacing my liver. Finally he gives me an injection in the bum. “It bring you fever down,” translates Toni. I explain that I don’t have fever in the bum. His fee is two thousand lire! I feel worse; I’m sickening for bankruptcy. I feel an overdraught coming under the door. I fall into a feverish sleep. When I awake, it’s night-time. The room is dark; Mulgrew is snoring. I switch my bedside light on; it’s 2 a.m. My temperature seems to be down. Has it gone to the bum? I get up to do a Jimmy, have a glass of water. Ridiculous, empty one end and fill up the other. Back to sleep.

By morning I am much improved. I get regular visitors; no, I’m not doing the show tonight, I am convalescing! Through the day my nurse Toni brings up drinks and snacks, which I nearly bring up, too. I’m still not cured. Do I want her doctor again? No, I say and am two thousand lire better off. Mulgrew tells me that when I was delirious, I was talking in my sleep. Did I say anything significant? “Yes, you kept saying we must get to the woods before the trees get there.” Yes, that sounds like me.

I borrow Priest’s radio and tune into the Allied Forces Network, Rome. What a treat! I lay back to a day’s listening. There was Debroy Summers and the world’s corniest band, ‘Organ Parade’ with Reginald Fort, ‘Forces Favourites’, ‘String Along with Sandy Powell’ (can you hear me, Mother?), then high notes and rupture with Richard Tauber, then cricket, Sussex vs. Essex, Joe Loss and his orchestra – he was the man who would give me my first stage break as a comic – then ITM A which, I am afraid, I didn’t find funny (my humour was more Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields) and ‘Parade for Swing’ with Harry Parry and his Quintet. Occasionally, I’d switch to the BBC General Forces programme which gave long boring news bulletins telling us that the price of butter had gone up and that food rationing would continue for the time being. Poor bloody Britain! Here, in Italy, eat as much as you like; but win the war, and you are rationed! I was still enjoying the radio by the time people were back from the show. They were all laughing – apparently, Eddy Garvey, the lead trumpet player, had had a disaster. He was washing his false teeth in his dressing-room when he dropped them and broke them. The result was a trumpet player who was a disaster. The whole evening was full of cracked notes and bad intonation which, though it baffled the audience, had the cast in fits. He is now walking around with his face folded, uttering gummy oaths.

Toni rushes up to see me. “Ow are you, my love?” she says. I tell her her love is better and will be up tomorrow night, knocking on her bedroom door. Is there anything I want? Yes, will she take her clothes off and get into bed for an hour’s sabbatical. “You much better,” she said with an impish grin.

So I was. Next morning I joined the human race again and was running last. I enjoyed my breakfast of boiled eggs. Two of them were being boiled and one said what a terrible life being boiled like this was. The other one said this is nothing, wait till you get out; they bash your bloody head in.

What shall we do this sunny but very windy day? We all settle to see the Colosseum. The four of us share a taxi – Mulgrew, Toni, Luciana and myself. The taxi drops us off in the shadow of the great edifice. We ascend the stairs to get to the top. It’s a bit hairy with the wind blowing up the girls’ skirts with constant double exposure of knickers. Other splendid views were the Great Arch of Constantine and the monument to the unknown soldier. He was possibly very well-known as a banker or a solicitor, but totally unknown as a soldier. The chambers beneath the floor of the Colosseum are exposed.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Mulgrew, “they actually threw living people to the lions here.”

“Yes,” I said, “it kept the food bills down.”

The wind blows Mulgrew’s hat olf; he dashes after it.

“
Che vento
,” exclaims Toni.

Indeed, what a wind. If they thought this was bad they should have heard my father; he was jet-propelled.

Mulgrew’s hat has gone spiralling into the arena. He appears below, a minuscule figure climbing over crumbling walls where he finally finds his hat. I give him the Roman thumbs-up sign; he gives me the British up yours.

“Terr-ee, too much wind here. We go down,” says Toni, clasping her skirts around her.

We descend to meet Mulgrew coming up. “Oh, Christ,” he groans, “all this way up for nothing.”

A great gust of wind, more knickers. The girls give a mixture of screams and giggles. This is no day for sightseeing unless you are a voyeur. Despite the gales whistling up our trouserlegs, I still have time to take in the incredible durability of a place started in 72 AD and still standing. What it must have looked like before it was stripped of its marble.

On the way down, we come to the Royal Box where Caesars sat. Mulgrew sits on the seat. “It suits you, Johnny; a ruined colosseum suits you,” I said. We continue down the timeless steps of history to the ground level. Another great gust, more knickers on display. Across the road is a coffee house where we settle. We sit in the shadow of the great edifice. I can imagine a Roman holiday and the great crowds flocking to the games, the sweetmeat vendors, chariots bearing important personages, attendants shouting ‘Hurry along, please, take your seats’, the great roar as a favourite gladiator enters the arena. There’s no denying man has a bloody lust.

Toni is saying how could people watch such cruelty. “Och,” says Mulgrew, “it’s no worse than Celtic versus Rangers; you should see the punch-ups.”

This reminded me of a story of two ancient Picts being captured by the Romans and condemned to be thrown to the lions. As they await this, they are talking about the women they were allowed as a last request. “Och, she was great,” says the Pict, “she had huge boobs. I’ll tell you more later, here come the lions.” I tried to explain the joke to the girls, but speaking in Italian with a Scots accent had its limitations – plus the fact there was no Italian word for the word ‘boobs’. ‘Booso’ was the nearest I could get. But my mime succeeds.

Oh, dear, this wind is too much for the ladies, their hair is becoming windblown. So we take a taxi back to the hotel. En route, Johnny suggests we go to the ENS A Supercinema. Yes, yes, yes. We redirect the taxi to the Via Depretis, which means passing the great Quirinal Palace. It seems that Roma is an unending vista of historical buildings.

“All king of Italy live here sometime,” says Toni.

“Very nice,” says Mulgrew of the magnificent edifice.

The cinema is showing
Hanover Square
with Laird Cregar. It’s basically the story of murder on Guy Fawkes night when Cregar, the murderer, dumps the body on a great bonfire. All through, Mulgrew makes remarks like ‘You’ll never get away with it, Jimmy’, “Fools! It’s a body not a dummy.” It is a film with unending background music. Nobody can move without musical accompaniment, giving a vision of a great orchestra just off screen following the actors wherever they go. It’s all monumentally boring. Cregar sweats profusely through the film and spends most of his time flattened against walls, avoiding the police. Hollywood films – when I think that all my emotional development was based on them! For me, the real world didn’t exist, so I grew up emotionally deformed. As I rode on those early workmen’s trams to Woolwich, filled with hunched people in workmen’s caps, I was still wrapped up in the aura of the last film I had seen at the Wasdale Road Astoria. Forest Hill. The tram, the fog-ridden cold morning outside were all imaginary. They would all disappear when I saw my next Bing Crosby film. Most of my middle life would be spent trying to escape from their cloying influence. The final nail in the coffin was a book by Bing Crosby’s son, Gary, in which Bing was anything but like what his films were. That’s when my past life sank without trace. Hollywood of the thirties and forties has a lot to answer for. It wasn’t until I saw
The Grapes of Wrath
that I saw a
real
film. Then, I thought it rotten because it didn’t have a happy ending. But now, I’m in Rome, taking a taxi back to the hotel. Unlike films, the first taxi you flag down doesn’t stop. They stop for Bing Crosby!

“God, we’re spending a fortune on taxis,” moans Mulgrew.