Goodbye Soldier (25 page)

Arriving in the piazza, we find it busy with nightlife. It’s a Saturday, and the piazza is fuller than normal. I give my bankroll a quick feel to give myself confidence. In the corner of the piazza is the Vienna Café – very smart, outdoor tables with snow-white starched napery and bowls of flowers. The waiters, too, looked starched and crackle when they move. This is an Austrian-run café: all the staff are blond and blue-eyed. All of them look like Nazis on the run; their smiles seem a mite pinched and insincere. However, the menu is Italian.

“Oh, this restaurant very chic, Terr-ee,” says Toni.

“Very nice,” I say, as I made heavy with tapping a cigarette on my case, a little too heavy – the end of the cigarette splits. Unlike Robert Taylor, I nip the end off and light up the remainder. Even though I’m Robert Taylor, there’s no need to be uneconomical. The waiter brings us two ridiculous menus about two foot long by one and a half foot wide. Mine obscures the view of Capri, Toni and the rest of Italy.

From behind this cardboard shield, I can at least hear her talking.

“Wot you have, Terr-ee?”

Terree will have Mozzarella and tomatoes, then scampi. Are you still there, Toni?

“Yes,” she giggles.

The waiter asks, any particular wine? I say, yes,
any
particular wine. Ah good, the piazza musicians have started up: they fill the night with melody – the vocalist, with halitosis, which he breathes over me when the band arrives at our table. He sings with a permanently outstretched arm, holding an inverted hat. Putting the menu on one side, I; take out my roll of money so that the entire square can see it. Slowly, oh, so slow, I peel off a thousand lire bill and drop it into his hat from a great height. The amount is large enough to bring a sob into his voice, and mine. He inserts the word ‘
grazie
’ into the song.

“You give lot of money,” says Toni.

“I know,” I say, “everyone in the piazza is talking about me.”

The waiter brings us a bottle of ‘any special wine’, a white, fruity Capri. We clink glasses and clink eyes; after a long, lingering, loving, lasting look with just a touch of the lascivious, we drink.

“This time we stay here most happy in my life,” she says.

“
Anche me
,” I reply. She inclines her head to one side – this would make me appear to be sitting at an angle.

“I very sorry when tonight finish.”

Amen.

“When I first meet you I girl, now I woman.”

Gad, two for the price of one!

The crackling waiter arrives with out first course. “
Signori
,” he says and sets it down. “
Buon appetito
,” he says with a grin, a Germanic half-bow and a click of his heels. Why doesn’t he just piss off?

Quick, my false beard and dark glasses and my Quasimodo hump! Gracie Fields has entered the piazza with three other people! One blessing, she’s not singing. Thank God, she’s jj sitting at the far end of the square. Her penetrating voice rises above the music. “
Buona
sers ee bai gum,” she is saying. People are turning and staring, she is big in England and known on Capri as
Nostra
Gracie. The question is, will she sing?

There is no scampi like Italian scampi and this scampi is
not
like Italian scampi. I call over a waiter who looks like Hermann Goering. “Vot is ronk vid it?” I tell him it’s scampi à la hard as bloody bullets. He sweeps it away and returns with scampi à la still as hard as bloody bullets. Would I like something else? Toni tells me her sole is very nice. OK, I’ll have that. Meantime, I’ll have another little tipple of wine. It’s happened! The musicians have reached Gracie Fields’s table and soon she is warbling ‘Vedo Mare, Quanto Bello’ in the sitting position. She has a strong penetrating voice; it can penetrate walls, battlements and eardrums. When she finishes, the whole square gives her generous applause. Is it with appreciation or relief?

The Dover sole is just as I like it, dead. The more I drink, the more I tell Toni I love her and sometimes I tell her I love the wine, I tell her I love the white-coated waiter, that horse across the square. I also love that square across the horse and the waiter’s white coat; I love the white square with the waiter across the horse’s coat and another bottle please. What’s the time? Midnight, we’d better be getting back to the hotel or my mother will be wondering where I am. As I accompany Toni to the funicular, I hear Gracie Fields singing again: it’s ‘Ave Maria’. The noise of the funicular drowns her out as we descend for the last time – goodbye, little piazza.

I desperately want to sleep with Toni and Toni is desperate not to. “No no no no, Terr-ee, no no no no, you go sleep. Stop that, no no no no no, please stop that,” she finally breaks my stranglehold on her and pushes me in the direction of away. All right, Toni, there’s always Lily Dunford of Brockley, Bette from Bexhill and Norwood Beryl!!! One last bedtime cigarette: I lie on my back under the covers with a slight steam on, enjoying the process of getting lung cancer, then fall into a delicious sleep. Arggghhhhhhhhhhh! I awake as the cigarette has burnt down to my fingers, bloody fool! I blow furiously on the burn and get light-headed. I run my finger under the tap – bloody fool, it’s somebody’s fault. To sleep for the second time, then. What a waste of time: eight hours laid out like a corpse. The trouble with sleep is that nothing happens.

NAPLES AGAIN

NAPLES AGAIN

I
awake to the sound of various church bells, wassatime? Nine o’clock. We have to catch the eleven o’clock ferry. I leap from my bed and hastily pack my suitcase, then collect Toni for breakfast. Is she packed? No, but her clothes are, ha ha ha. Mario knows we are leaving today – most important to him is how much. I settle the bill with Mr Brinati.

“I hope you enjoy Capri,” he says.

“Apart from the shit-strewn sea, we have.”

It’s cost us ten thousand lire.

As we leave the hotel, Mr Brinati stands at the door and waves us goodbye.

Lugging Toni’s suitcase and mine, I lead down the little path to the Marina Grande. We can see that the ferry has docked. From where we are the ship looks like a toy. As we get nearer, it gets bigger. Not many people boarding. At the top of the gangplank, I present our return tickets to a scruffy-looking sailor with all the animation of a wooden leg. He is to sea travel what Charles Manson was to vegetarianism.

We go into the saloon and sit on the bench seat like lost children. At the bar, the barman is polishing glasses. “I hope I no sick this time,” says Toni. It would certainly be a messy end to the holiday. She sits in anticipation, I give her hand a squeeze, she smiles back. A few more passengers are hurrying up the gangplank – an Italian family with two young children. They enter the saloon, the woman whoops out one of her boobs and starts to feed the baby. You don’t get that on the 74a tram going to Forest Hill.

The engines throb into life and there are shouts from the bridge as the tie-off hawsers are freed from the bollards. Slowly, the ferry appears to turn on its axis and the vessel heads out to sea. Thank God, it’s totally calm and by the time we are halfway across, Toni is still all right. We have made our way to the deck above and stand at the rails in the ship’s slipstream. It’s a hot day but the sea air is delightfully cool, like real cool, man. Behind us Capri is getting smaller; we stay the same size. We must have got off just in time. Napoli and its giant Mount Vesuvius are appearing through a morning haze. Naples is getting bigger – by the time we arrive, it’s the right size to accommodate us. I realize that all through the trip, neither of us had said a word. As we are docking, Toni looks at me: “All finish,” she says with a note of sadness. “Never mind,” says Merry Milligan, tomorrow we journey to the Eternal City and stay with ‘Momma’ where our sex life will come to a grinding halt. Still, there are other things – ice-cream, spaghetti, rug-weaving and light groping.

After Capri, Naples is like a madhouse – the noise! And a variety of smells, from stale fish to guardsmen’s socks.

“
Che massa?
” says Toni, as we thread our way through the dockside crowds.

“
Scusi, scusi
,” I repeat
ad nauseam
.

The taxi we catch is a scream: at the back, it’s down on its springs; the front points up so the driver has to permanently elongate his neck to see the road. We at the back are in the semi-prone position. All my life I’d been prone to semis (Eh?). Toni and I discuss tomorrow’s arrangements. We have to catch the 10.30 train to Rome in the morning; I’ll call for her at etc., etc., etc. I drop her at the Albergo Rab-icino; a goodbye kiss, and I’m off to mine.

When I arrive I go straight to Bill Hall’s bedroom – my God, he’s still in bed! Has he been up since I left him? “Ow you get on with your bird in Capri?” he says, searching for his fags. “Shagged out, are you?” What has he been doing? “I done some local gigs with Bornheim and Mulgrew. We got one tomorrer night at the Officers’ Club. You want to sit on guitar?”

“No, Bill, I’m off to Rome with Toni. Any news about the boat passage?”

“No, it’s being arranged through Major Philip Ridgeway at CSE. ‘Ee thinks it will be on the
Dominion Monarch
. ‘Ee said ‘ee thinks it will be sailing on 15 September.”

“He
thinks?
Doesn’t he know?”

“Don’t ask me, mate. That’s wot ‘ee told me.”

15 September – that would give me a good clear week of rug-making and light groping in Roma, and a few days to spare in Naples.

When I get to my room, there is a load of mail on my bed. My father has sent me a roll of newspapers, a real treat. I spend the afternoon finding how the rest of the world is faring. How good to see English newspapers again!

BREAD RATION; NO CHANGE YET

Ah, here’s a good one:

Gerry Merry, father of twenty-two children, fined for stealing from chemist’s shop

—he must have been after condoms.

Heath for Trial on Chine Murder Charge

—so someone’s been murdering Chines. Are they small China-men? I loved seeing the ads again. ‘Biscuits Keep You Going’.

Did this mean the runs? Then, “Repair War-Damaged Hair with Silvikrin!”

‘For Inner Health, Take Bile Beans’.

Evening. Hall wants to know if I want to come down to a club on the Via Roma.

“It’s a nightclub. Lot of ‘Mericans down there, plenty of Eyetie birds – got a good Eyetie band. They let me sit in.”

I’m at a loose end and it’s frayed, so OK. Yes, Bill, let’s go in there and beat up a storm – yeah, wow, beat me, Daddy, eight to the bar. I’ll bring my guitar along.

We duly enter the door of a place called The Den. We descend stairs to a basement, where a band is trying to be heard above the noise of the customers. It’s a postage-stamp-sized room, the smoke so thick the band on the far side are hardly visible. Everyone is on the floor jiving. Around the perimeter are chairs and tables; we manage to get a couple in the corner by the band. The leader, one Franco Pattoni, plays tenor sax. He sees Bill and waxes lyrical.

“Ah, Beel,
vieni, vieni
,” and beckons him to come up.

“We drink first,” says Bill, miming the action.

“Ello, big boy.” I look up at an overmade-up but very pretty Italian girl of statuesque proportions, smiling down at me. “You buy drink, I dance weese you,” she says.

I’m looking up at her directly under her prominent boobs that give a promise of pneumatic bliss. No, I won’t dance but she can sit and have a drink. She pulls up a chair and crosses her legs, a good safety move.

“You American?” she asks.

“No, I’m not.”

Straight away, I lose marks. Can she have a cigarette? Yes. Can she have a light? Yes, anything else? Is there any laundry she wants doing? Yes, she’d like a brandy and coke. She also Wants to know if I’m married. No, I’m single and have to depend on Swedish massage. Her name is Bianca Bianci, mine is Spike Milligan.

Bill Hall leans over with a gleam in his eye. “If you play your cards right, you could catch it off her,” he says.

After a drink, we both get on the stand and join in the jazz. It’s a very good combo, playing music of a professional standard. Bianca sits and watches – I hope she also listens. She recrosses her legs; it must be hell in there. She is whisked away by a drunken GI and waves me goodbye over his shoulder. Another woman in my life gone! How they pile up.

By midnight no one has asked us to play ‘Lay That Pistol Down, Babe’ – it must be some kind of record. I’ve had enough. As I put my guitar away, I’m confronted by both of Bianca Bianci’s.

“You want good time?” she says.

No, thank you, I’ve just had one but don’t let me stop you having one. She really likes me, lays a hand on my lapel.

“Oh, why you say no,” she says, pouting.

“Pouting is such sweet sorrow,” I say.

I leave – it had been a near thing for Toni. By taxi, back to the hotel where I ask the night porter could he get me some food. “No,
signore
.” I hold up a hundred lire note and “Yes,
signore
.” He raids the kitchen and comes into my room with – Arghhhhhhhhhhhh, no, it’s Cold Collation! It’s better than nothing, but only just! I eat it by closing my eyes and thinking of England. I next indulge in a hard night’s sleeping in the kneeling load position. (What am I talking about? Helppppp.)

ROME YET AGAIN

ROME YET AGAIN

M
onday morning finds me packing my best clothes for the Rome trip. I pack my Bing Crosbys, my Robert Taylors and my Leslie Howards. At breakfast Bill Hall, who in the morning looks like a mummy with bandages off, wants to know do I want a gig tonight. No, I’m going to Rome with Toni.

“Aven’t you had enough rumpo?” he says. How can he be so crude about my love affair? It’s not rumpo I’ll be after in Rome, it will be ice-cream, spaghetti, rug-weaving and light groping in between mother-in-laws. Will he still be in Naples when I get back?

“I suppose so. ‘Oo wants to go back to bloody England in the winter?”

“Oh, don’t you want to see the old folks at home?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they don’t want to bloody well see me. They only written to me once – that was to tell me they’d let my room.”

I take my leave, scoot upstairs three at a time, trip and fall down four at a time. I’ve hurt myself, elbows, shins and all parts south of the meridian. Clutching my injuries I go to me room and get the porter to order me a taxi. Limping, I lug my heavier-than-me suitcase to the waiting vehicle. “Albergo Rabicino” I tell the unshaved, bleary-eyed taxi driver. He’s one of those slow-witted drivers that lose control at speeds over twenty miles an hour. Painfully slow, he chugs down the streets of the Vomero. He’s very good at shouting, excellent. He shouts at all and sundry, for what reason is beyond me, but then he
is
beyond reason.

Toni is waiting at the front door of the hotel. I collect her and her two suitcases and we are on our way to the Central Station. The crowds there are frightening. I book two first-class tickets, “
Piattaforma numero due
” says the ticket office man. Through a nightmare of people with a high garlic content, we struggle to the platform where the train is now standing. We find two seats in a
non-fumare
carriage. Thank God, we’re early. Soon the train fills up with what appear to be peasant families and their furniture fleeing the wrath of Saracen invaders. Fathers shout, mothers scream, children howl. Obvious third-class passengers crowd into our carriage and the corridors. I look at Toni, who seems quite cool and undisturbed.

“Is it always like this?”

“No,” she says, “this is a good day.”

I’d never seen congealed people before.

To shouts, whistles and flag waving, the train pulls out. Everybody seems to be in a rage. The nicest part is I’m squashed up next to Toni. On my left is a huge, heavy-breathing, fat woman with a huge basket on her lap. From it protrudes bread and the neck of a wine bottle. The thought of trying to get to the toilet fills me with dread. I pray God that my bladder will hold out for the trip. After half an hour Toni wants just that. She disappears into the crowded corridor. I don’t see her again for nearly half an hour. When she comes back, she tells me there’s a queue a mile long for the loo. I say, I know, I’m on the end of it. It takes me half an hour to get there. The loo is in an appalling state; no one appears to have holed in one. Back to Toni. The journey will last two hours – the question is, will we?

It is with a gasp of relief that we steam into Rome Central and fall out of the carriage. We throw ourselves in a taxi and thank God it’s all over. On on on to Via Appennini! Signora Fontana is waiting at the door with sister Lily and maid Gioia. There’s endless embracing and kisses on each cheek. “
Benvenuto
, Terr-ee,” they all say as the kissing roundelay continues.

“Come, Terr-ee, I show you your room.”

Toni leads me to a neat, small bedroom at the back of the apartment. I dump my bags.

Mangiare mezzogiorno
has been laid on. Fussing like a mother hen, Signora Fontana shows us our seat placings. “Terr-ee,
qui
,” she gestures.

“How did the show go in Naples?” asks sister Lily, who will have to be killed.

“Oh, the show in Naples? Very well. Oh, yes, my word, the show in Naples, ha ha, it was splendid.”

Signora Fontana tells us there has been a one-day strike of tram drivers. Oh, really? How interesting. Does Signora Fontana know that the price of butter has gone up in Poland, and there are no dry-cleaners in Peru, and a Negro vicar has crossed Scotland on one leg, medicine is now free in England and so is illness? Soon I’m left out of the conversation as they all talk in Italian at a speed too fast for me by far. I just sit and when they all laugh I join in like an idiot. When the meal ends, Toni remembers me again. “My mother have bought ticket for opera tomorrow night. You like see?” Yes, I’d like see. The meal ends with zabaglione. “Gioia make for you, she know you like,” says Toni. Delicious! Now it’s announced that all the ladies are going to afternoon mass. Do I want to come, too? No, I’ve got this bad leg.

I spent a relaxing afternoon listening to the Allied Forces Network which played unending programmes of big band music. This afternoon, I remember, it was Artie Shaw. I didn’t know at the time that the days of the big band were numbered (I think this was number six). Swing music was the ‘in’ thing and I was part of the scene, man. When the ladies returned from mass, they found me stretched out on the sofa, asleep, with the radio on. It had been a boring service with an old priest who couldn’t enunciate well and dribbled. Now some tea: Gioia disappears into the kitchen. The Signora wants to give me a present, a book,
Italia Paese dell’Arte
– was this Artie Shaw?

Dedication by Toni’s mother in the book.

We sit round drinking tea and drumming up conversation. What will I be doing when I get back to England? As I step off the boat, I will immediately become famous – that’s what. The Bill Hall Trio will be up there in lights, London will be at our feet, shins and groins! Toni tells her mother how successful we are. Oh yes, her mother knows, had she not seen us triumph at the Argentine Theatre, even if she herself was a bit baffled by the act? I remember her mother had no idea ofjazz and couldn’t understand why we all wore rags, and
why
were people laughing at us? It wasn’t fair. How is my mother? My mother is very well. And my father? He’s well, too. What about my brother? Would you believe he’s well as well. The phone goes, Lily rushes to it. It’s her beau. Immediately her body turns to jelly and she speaks
sotto voce
, blushing and giggling, running her finger up and down the wall. Toni smiles, “This new boyfriend.” Lily is now rocking backwards and forwards and her finger is going up and down the wall faster. What
is
he saying to her?

Toni unwraps the presents she bought on Capri. They are all delighted. Gioia is delighted with her pincushion and hugs it to her; Signora Fontana tries on her headscarf. Lily is weaving from side to side and trying to drill a hole in the table with her index finger. She is nodding her head – how can he hear that on the phone? She seems to be going into a trance. Who is she speaking to, Svengali? I have another cup of tea. They want to know have I any plans for the evening?

Yes, but I left them in my other jacket pocket – I remember, though. I thought Toni and I might go to the pictures. “Oh, yes,” says Toni enthusiastically. Splendid, her mother is expecting an old schoolfriend and will no doubt spend the evening going over the old school exams. “Do you remember 2X2 = 4?”

“As if it were yesterday.”

The drag of going to an ENS A cinema is that I have to wear my CSE uniform to be allowed in free. When we arrive, we see they are showing
Fantasia
. I’v seen it before but it’s good enough to see again, if only for the hippo and crocodile ballerinas in the ‘Dance of the Hours’. In the dark, we sit holding hands and sucking boiled sweets. It’s a very enjoyable, relaxing evening until three soldiers sit in front of us. The one in front of me has a head the size of a Dickens’s Christmas pudding with ears that look like another two heads looking over his shoulders. He totally obscures the screen and Italy. I have to watch with my head inclined at sixty degrees.

Film over, we usher forth. It’s now dark and Rome is at its best – people in their Sunday clothes, the streets thronged with those just out walking or sitting at street cafés. “Come,” says Toni, “I show you nice place.” Back home, at this time of night, I could have shown Toni Reg’s Café opposite Brockley Cemetery where you could get eggs, sausage and chips with bread and butter for half a crown. I daren’t tell, I didn’t want to make her jealous. Three streets up she shows me a little trattoria where we settle. Would she like dinner here? No, “Just glass wine.” She tells me, with a note of sadness in her voice, that when her father was alive he sometimes used to bring the family here for dinner. Did my father ever take me to dinner?

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“50 Riseldene Road, Brockley.”

“That is restaurant?”

“No, that’s my home.”

Toni laughs, a plus mark. We sip our wine watching life’s circus pass by.

“People in Rome very chic, Terr-ee, yes?”

Those who are perambulating do so at a pace that is not far short of standing still. The ladies throw their weight on to alternate feet to give their bottoms a slow rotating wobble. All Italian women have it. Rome must be a voyeur’s paradise. Toni and I point out people that interest. For instance, what is the old bald man with watery eyes doing with a sixteen-year-old temptress? What tablets is he on? Toni releases titbits of scandals.

“All men in Rome like young girl,” she says with a knowing look. “When I in Rome ballet, many old men come to stage door and give me flowers, many.”

We finish our wine and taxi back home. She shushes me as the rest of the family are in bed. She rustles us up some sandwiches. We sit and eat, listening to the AF Network turned low.

“I lak jizz but I no understand.”

“If you like it, that’s all that matters. It’s like wine – you like it or you don’t.”

In retrospect, I realize how simple our conversations were, almost mundane.

After a quick canoodle on the couch and a lot of lascivious whispers from me and a clothesline of no, no, noes from Toni, I go to my bedroom. I lie in bed, my mind wandering lonely as a cloud that drifts on high. I couldn’t wait to get to England and start the act on its road to fame…

∗

What a treat: I’m awakened by Toni, all bathed and perfumed, with my breakfast on a tray. Her mother has gone to work, sister Lily to college, only Gioia in the flat – she’ll have to be killed. “How you sleep?” she says. I tell her I slept on my left side with my knees drawn up under my chin. “Theeese bed OK for you?” Yes it’s OK for me, but too narrow to be OK for us. “You naughty.”

When I’ve bathed and dressed, she tells me we are going visiting to see Luciana Campila, her ballet friend from the tour. “
Via XXI di Aprile
,” she tells the taxi. Why is the street called 21 April? She doesn’t know. It might be after some special occasion, then again it might be named after 21 April.

You can never tell with a local council – in Brockley, we had a Fred Street and an Enid Terrace.

The Campilas are a bustling middle-class Italian family with two daughters. When we arrive, the middle-aged plump Signora Campila is in the kitchen massaging a huge lump of dough to make pasta, with the aid of her daughters. They all break into animated conversation but, after a brief introduction,
I
might as well be tied up in the garden. As they continue, I wish I was. There are bursts of conversations, then shrieks of laughter – every now and then one of them giving me a sympathetic look as though I
should
be tied up in the garden. Luciana has become engaged to Dennis Evans, a military pianist at CSE Naples. They are to be married and live in Cwmllynfell, which he can’t even spell. He’s a miner; they will live with his mother and father in one room and live happily ever after, until she flees back to Rome two months later, covered in coal dust and pregnant – but that’s all in the future. My future will start the moment this cabal of females breaks up. “Terr-ee, you lak cup of coffee?” says Toni.

How nice, she still remembers me! I sip my coffee like I’ve just come back from the dead. From what I can make out of the conversation, it’s all scandal. When they get excited, the Campilas attack the dough with greater ferocity. It looks like three women beating up a malleable midget.

After a couple of hours in Coventry, Toni says we are leaving. I’d left hours ago. We go back home where Gioia has prepared us a salad lunch.

“The opera this evening, tell me about it!”

“Ah, you lak very much – Aida in the Terme di Cara-calla.”

Did I hear right? We’re going to watch an opera being held in Caracalla’s bath?

“Yes, Terr-ee, in the, how you say,
rovina
.”

Ah the
ruins
of the Baths of Caracalla, how hygienic! Do we have to take soap and towel?