Peace Work (6 page)

∗

Interval and Hall appears. “Wots orl the fuss I’m in time for the act aren’t I?” We are again the hit of the evening. The applause was longer than normal; we do an extra encore and busk ‘Undecided’.

PADUA AGAIN

“A
h Ter-ee, today we go see Basilica St Anthony of Padua.”

She is a little bossy boots.

“OK. Mulgrew wants to tag along.”

“OK.”

Ah! That basilica! Built in the eleventh century!! And looking fresh and magnificent. Seven weathered bronze cupolas are its roof; it looks like a multiple Santa Sophia. As you approach the entrance, there is a Donatello, a magnificent bronze equestrian statue of Erasmo di Narni (Rasmus the Nana). Inside is a treasure house of marble statues and paintings. Suddenly, the outside noise is subdued, voices become sibilant. Toni has covered her head with a black lace shawl; mine is covered in Brylcreem. Catholics all, we cross ourselves with Holy Water that looks like a breeding ground for typhoid. I recalled how a priest at St Saviour’s, Brockley Rise, a hygiene fanatic, used to add Dettol to the Holy Water. When we returned from mass, my father asked: “Have you been to church or had an operation?”

Here, mass is about to be said. Holding candlesticks, a chanting string of choirboys with faces like cherubim precede a grim-faced priest and retinue. He is mouthing the words, but not singing. He’s heard it all before.

“You want stay for mass?” whispers Toni.

“OK, just a little.”

We slide our knees into an empty pew. The chanting echoes round the vaulted ceiling like trapped birds trying to escape. The gloom of the interior is punctured by a poin-tillism of candles flickering before statues with sightless eyes and marbled brains. The waft of stale incense is being topped up with fresh ignitions. Old ladies in black eschew older prayers. They pass the Stations of the Cross, each one jostling with her neighbour for a better place in heaven. Why are the poor so rich in religion? Do the godless rich rely on St Peter taking bribes? “
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus
,” intones the priest. The communicants, heads hanging like condemned murderers, scuffle to the Communion rail, their heads jerk back to receive the Host. It’s rather like a petrol station, each one being refilled for their spiritual journey.

It was nice to hear the tongue of the Romans still in use. There’s the final blessing –
Dominus vobiscum;
we reply,
Et cum spirito tuo
, and Ta raaaa…that’s the end. We walk out into the bright sunshine. Mulgrew is gasping for a fag, especially one of mine. I open my silver case, he takes one, I snap the case shut like Bogart. I tap my cigarette on the lid. With a flick, I send the cigarette up my nose.

“That’s the first time I’ve been in a Catholic church,” said Mulgrew (a lapsed Scottish Presbyterian).

“I promise I won’t tell anyone,” I said. Toni wants to tidy up her hair, “That lace shawl catch my hair.” She got Mulgrew to hold her mirror.

Mirror, mirror! Toni fixes her hair with the aid of Mulgrew.

I drop these photos in from time to time so you don’t think I’m making this all up.

The occasion is marred by rain. We run for the covered walkways by the shops and finally make a dash for the Blancoed Lion. Ah! There’s some more mail. My folks have sent me a parcel of books and magazines, so I settle down for a good afternoon’s read. I read we now have a Labour government with Clem Attlee as Prime Minister. After having that wonderful man Churchill, we now have someone who looks like an insurance clerk on his way to a colonic irrigation appointment. I ask Mulgrew what he thinks of Attlee.

“I never think of Attlee.”

“Do you think of any politicians?”

“I sometimes think of what Bessie Braddock looks like with her clothes off. It’s therapeutic! Something else, politicians should only be allowed to make speeches with their trousers down. It would be a test of their sincerity.”

Is Mulgrew mad? Could Churchill have made his ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’ speech with his trousers down?

SPEAKER:

Will the honourable gentleman lower his trousers and answer the question.

CHURCHILL:

I’m sorry, Mr Speaker, but I’ve forgotten my underpants…

VENICE AGAIN

VENICE AGAIN

T
he rain continues, thunder added to the downpour. I read Mulgrew bits of spicy headlines:

Nude trombone player in bath mystery

FILM STAR SWALLOWS OIL SLICK

…etc. etc. The
Daily Mirror
wins the prize with its headline about a vicar molesting choir boys:

REVEREND SMITH: GO UNFROCK YOURSELF

It was in deluge conditions that we set out for the theatre, the windows steamed up, the roar of the rain incessant.

“Christ,” says Bornheim. “We’ll end up on Mount Ararat with two of each animal.” He peers through the window. Bornheim enjoyed a good peer.

Lieutenant Priest is poking the driver, pointing up and saying, “Sunny Italy,
si?
” Luigi grins and shrugs his shoulders. Luigi liked a good shrug.

MY MOTHER: Where have you been to this time of night? ME: I’ve been out shrugging, Mum.

∗

Thank God, the barge has put up canvas awnings. We push out into the Lagoon show, the spray washing over us all crouched in the back. Some people like a good crouch.

∗

MY MOTHER: Have you been out shrugging again? ME: NO, I’ve been out crouching.

∗

We arrive at the theatre damp. Bill Hall is missing again. I discover him asleep in the dressing-room, covered in an army overcoat. Stretched out, his feet protruding, he looked like an effigy of a very down-market crusader tomb. He tells me he missed the transport home last night. What kept him?

“I met this girl from the box office.”

Girl?? She’s this side of fifty, wears pebble-dash glasses…

“Be grateful for bad eyesight, Bill,” says Mulgrew.

What a mess! This dressing-room that once housed Caruso, Pavlova, Tibaldi, now has Hall’s laundry strung across it.

The show is a bit of a fiasco (which bit I’m not sure). The thunder drowns out most of the dialogue. This was the night when during the mock fight Chalky White split my lip. In a rage, I shouted above the thunder, “You cunt!” The soldier audience dissolved into laughter. It didn’t end there. When White made his next entrance, a drunken voice from the gallery shouted, “Look, it’s that cunt again.”

The show finishes but the rain doesn’t. “It’s a serial,” says Bornheim. We sat huddled in our motor barge.

“
Che pioggia
,” says the helmsman.

“Wots ‘ee say?” says Hall.

“He says what rain,” I said.

“Tell him King George the Sixth.”

The thunder rackets overhead, the sky is gashed by lightning. The Lagoon lights up like a silver tray, the surface is a fleece of raindrops. We make the causeway soaked to the skin. I help Toni from the barge and give them a quick squeeze. “Pleaseeeee, Tereeee,” she exclaimed. “You are naughty,
catlivo
boy.” Why do men want to squeeze women’s boobs? It only puts them out of shape. It’s something to do with being weaned.

By eleven o’clock we are back at the Blancoed Lion. We rush upstairs to dry off and rush down for dinner. I’m staring into Toni’s eyes. Waiter, waiter, a double bed please! Would
signor
like anything on it? Yes, Miss Fontana with as little dressing as possible! Arggghhhhhh! The rain has stopped and after dinner the Trio play for dancing. We invite the waitresses to join in. May I have the next Spaghetti Neapolitan with you? The dance leads to trouble, some of the local yobs have started to gather outside at the large glass window and now start shouting threats at the Italian girls for dancing with Allied soldiers. They make that nasty sign of cutting women’s hair. We stop the dance as they are trying to break in, so we phone the Military Police. We block the doorway, standing shoulder to shoulder. Terry Pellici, a cockney Italian, was remonstrating with them. There’s a lot of barging, chest to chest. Maxie, our strong man, bodily picks up one of the mob and hurls him back into the crowd. It stems the tide long enough for the Redcaps’ arrival in a jeep, and disperses what could have been a nasty situation. And so to bed – first, a tap on Toni’s door to say goodnight and give them a quick squeeze. “Pleaseeeee, Tereeee.”

∗

Next day is bright and sunny. We are awakened by our nubile waitress with the tea trolley. What a luxury! She has nice legs and a wobbly bottom with the consistency of a Chivers jelly. Mulgrew lights his first cigarette of the day, has a fit of coughing that sounds like a plumber unblocking a sink. With a contused face and eyes watering, he says, “Oh, lovely! Best fag of the day.” Then falls back exhausted on the pillow.

Toni has gone on the roof to sunbathe. “I want brown all over,” she says. “If you come up, make a noise.” I promise I will yodel like Tarzan. Ah! Some more mail has caught up with me and a parcel! My mother’s letter is full of warnings about show business: “It can ruin your health, and knock yourself up.” How does one knock oneself up?

INSTRUCTOR:

Take up the normal standing position, clench fist, then start to rotate the arm, getting faster and faster. When going at good speed, thud fist under chin and travel upwards.

Terry Pellici is leaving today to be demobbed. He asks us all to have a farewell drink; so, I say farewell to my drink and swallow it. I ask Terry was it awkward, being Italian by descent, having to serve in the Allied Army and fight his own people? “That’s the way the cookie crumbles. I’m an Eyetie cockney. In a war you got to be on somebody’s side, so I was on somebody’s side.”

“You got relatives living here?”

“Yer, in Cattolica. I went to visit them. It was funny – most of ‘em were in the Eyetie Army. I thought,” here he started to laugh, “one of them might say, you shoota my uncle.” Terry had been in the 74 Mediums, a sister regiment to the 56 Heavy. “They used me as an interpreter. I did well with Eyetie POWs: I tell them first thing they had to give up was their watches. I made a bomb on them in Tunis.” He brandishes an expensive chronometer: “Eyetie colonel.”

He asks me for my home address and promises to contact me when I return. He never did. In 1976 I phoned him. “Is that Pellici’s Café?”

“Yer, ‘oo is it?”

“You wouldn’t know me. I was killed in the war.”

“Oo
is
that?”

“Gunner Milligan.”

“Spike! I’ve been meaning to write to you.” Thirty years he’s been meaning to write!

We finish the booze up and Terry gets on his Naples-bound lorry. First, I take a posed picture of him sorrowing at his departure.

Terry Pellici’s farewell pose

∗

Toni! She should be nude by now. I tiptoe up the stairs with Bornheim, my camera ready to click. She must have heard because by the time we got there she had her petticoat on. I got Bornheim to hold her while I took this memorable shot.

Toni resisting being snapped in her petticoat.