Authors: Spike Milligan

Tags: #Arts & Photography, #Performing Arts, #Humor & Entertainment, #Humor, #Memoirs

Peace Work (32 page)

BOOK: Peace Work

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I depart to amnesia because where I picked up the lorry is lost for ever. However, I remember the journey back. The driver was a north-countryman, he hardly said a bloody word all through the journey. I sat there in silence with Rome falling farther and farther behind. It was a hot, dusty day and I dozed frequently in the cab. When we reach the Garigliano plain, I can see Colle Dimiano where I was wounded. It all seemed so unreal now, but I think I left part of myself up there for ever; after the incident, I was never the same.

Suddenly, as we near Naples, the creep driver seems to speak. “Do you know what time is?”

“Yes,” I say. Period. I’d make the bugger suffer.

He pauses and repeats, “Do you know what time is?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, what is it then?”

Finally, I tell him. He nods his head in acknowledgement, his vocabulary expended. He drops me at the bottom of the Via Roma. I delighted in saying goodbye. “Tatar, you little bundle of fun,” I said.

I’m in the welter of the Neapolitan rush hour and garlic. I manage to get a taxi back to the hotel. The old fragile porter grabs my bag; he’ll take it to my room. He strains and staggers to the lift. I have to wait for him, I have to help him into the lift where he stands gasping for breath. He must be training for a coronary. On my floor, he staggers behind me. I offer to carry it. “
Mo, no signore, tutto a posto
,” he’ll just have a little rest in the corridor. I go ahead and wait in my room – poor old bugger, he’s doing it in anticipation of a tip or death, whichever comes first. I give him two hundred lire – it’s a good tip. “
Mille grats, signor
,” he says in Neapolitan dialect and shuffles out the room. I put through a phone call to Toni. After a delay it comes through.

“Hello, Toni.”

“Terr-ee,” she gasps, “my Terr-ee, you go all right Napoli?”

“Yes, I go all right in Napoli.”

“Ow lovlee ‘ear your voice,
mio tesoro
. I miss you much already. Why you go away?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just now we have dinner. Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.”

A little more of that type of chat and we finish. Yes, I promise I’ll phone tomorrow. No, I won’t go out getting drunk with Mulgrew. No, I won’t go near other girls. Now, where is that man Hall. I buzz his room.

“Oos that?”

“Me, Spike. Are there any gigs going? I’m at a loose end till the boat sails.”

No, no gigs tonight. There’s one tomorrow. Do I mind playing in a sergeants’ mess? Well as long as it isn’t too big a mess.

“Wot you doing tonight?”

“I’m not doing anything tonight.”

“Well, good luck with it,” he says.

I met him in the dining-hall for dinner. Has he seen Mulgrew or Bornheim lately? Yes, he’s done a couple of gigs with them. What about the
Dominion Monarch
and the sailing date? That’s all fixed, I have to collect my ticket from Major Ridgeway. So the end is in sight: it’s goodbye Italy and hello Deptford.

∗

The remaining days were very very boring. So I won’t bore the reader. I do a couple of band gigs on guitar with Hall, Bornheim and Mulgrew at military establishments. I collect my boat ticket and passport and I buy a few trinkets for my mother and father. Most days I spend in my room reading books from the hotel library. The very last one was the story of San Michele by Axel Munthe, a most moving story about Capri.

The night before I sail, Jimmy Molloy checks into the hotel. He’s booked on the same ship as me. He wants to have a night out; he knows a good officers’ nightclub on the seafront. OK, I’ll come with him and wear the suit. It’s the Club Marina, ‘Officers Only’. We show our CSE passes. Down a corridor to a large room with a central dance floor, where a good Italian band are playing the music of our time. There are hostesses at the bar: no, Jimmy, I’m not interested. Well, he is. He goes over and chats to one and brings her back to our table. Ah, good, wait till she sees my suit. She is pretty stunning, small, petite, saturnine-dark with a pair of giant olive eyes.

“This is Francesca,” says Molloy.

“
Piacera
,” I say.

She throws me a dazzling white-toothed smile. More than that, as the evening progresses I realize that she fancies me and my suit. “I fink I’ve picked a loser here,” chuckled Molloy. Do I want to take her over? No no no, Jimmy, I am promised to another. He gives me a disbelieving look. “Come on, a bit on the side won’t hurt.” I told him I had no bits on my side, all my bits were at the front, so I’d be the wrong fit for her. However it’s nice flirting with her.

The lights go down: a spotlight on the stage illuminates an Italian MC in a white jacket. “Laddies and Gintilmin, nower oura starer of thee cabareter, Gina Escoldi.” He points left, the band strikes up and a ballerina on points pirouettes on the the floor and sings ‘a hubba hubba hubba’ with red-hot accompaniment. She has a coarse croaky voice, loaded with sex – all the while standing on points. It was a head-on collision between jazz and ballet, but very successful. She goes down big with what is in the majority, an American officer audience.

At the end of the evening Molloy says, “You takin’ this bird or not.” I decline, cursing the fact that I have a conscience. “One day,” he laughs, “you’ll regret this decision!” What did he mean ‘one day’, I was regretting it
now
. While he offs with her, I off to the hotel and bed. While I lay there, my mind was going through the long years away from home. Had I really been in action in North Africa? Had I really taken part in the Tunis Victory Parade? Did I land at Salerno? It all seemed unreal, like a distant dream ending up in the most distant dream of all – Toni and me on Capri. Would the sun ever shine like that again?

∗

On departure morning I awake and, first thing, put in a call to Toni. We say our final goodbyes – tears on the phone from Rome. At breakfast, I meet Jimmy Molloy. “That bird last night, what a con. When we get to ‘er place, she just kisses me goodnight then pisses off. I think it was all your bloody fault, Milligan.” Smugly, I say, yes, it undoubtedly was.

Our ship sails at midday. We have to start boarding at 10.30. We take a taxi to the quay where the
Dominion Monarch
awaits. We both have first-class passages – I’m nominated a cabin on the port side. A young English steward carries my bag and calls me sir. It’s a fine, single-berth cabin with a porthole for looking out – or, if you hang on the outside, for looking in. “If there’s anything you want, sir, just ring the service button.” I locate the Purser’s Office where a grim-faced staff change my lire into sterling, which looks much less. Up on the promenade deck I find Molloy and I get him to take my photo.

The ship is alive with bustle, with sailors shouting yo ho ho and pouring hot tar down the hatches. At midday the gangplank is removed, the ship gives a long mournful blast on the hooter and a tug starts to manoeuvre us out to sea. Molloy and I stand at the rail. Slowly, the great ship puts on speed, the Italian mainland recedes into the distance, finally lost in a haze. It’s over: it’s goodbye Italy, goodbye Toni and goodbye soldier.