Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (9 page)

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

T
his 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

B
y 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

O
ctober 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.