Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (26 page)

Would I like to have tea with her some time and see her javelino? Yes. I retire to my wonderful room, I luxuriate in the bath and watch the bubbles rise. Wearing my now splodgy blue pyjamas I slide slowly between the sheets. Ahhh!

Oh wonderful clean sheets

One of nature’s real treats

Tho’ my pyjamas don’t look very good

It’s better than walking the streets.

— W. McGonagall

Around about midnight I have written several letters and am reading an anthology of British Verse printed in Italy. I’m skimming through Shakespeare’s Sonnets and in comes Staggering L/Bdr Secombe, ha ha, he has that huge grin with revolving teeth. “Hello, hello, hoo! up! scream! raspberry: Whoops.” He gets up again. “Spike, do you like beer?” Yes, he empties a bottle of it over me, screams with laughter, falls back on the bed, which collapses, and goes into a deep cross-eyed grinning sleep. Thank God, he’s unconscious. I strip off my sodden pyjamas, take a shower, and when I get back he’s gone!!! No, no, he’s hammering on the door, he thought he was going into the bathroom and went into the hall. I let the chattering farting thing in, he lets go with a few top C’s and vanishes into the bathroom. There’s a great crash as he does something or other. I put my beer-soaked pillows on his bed and take his.

He didn’t come out of the bathroom. Next morning I found him asleep in his bath, an idiotic smile on his face and one boot off. God, Wales has a lot to answer for.

He arises and is full of the joys of chattering, farting, singing and cries of Hey hup la! He’s down the stairs like a clockwork doll, into the dining-room, eats six breakfasts, sings, whistles and farts his way through ten cups of tea. Where was he last night? He went to a dance, met a pretty signorina hoi hup! and in a moment of Welsh hieraith hoi! hup! gave her his leather Army jerkin. From now on he
froze
.

“The hit of the night was Bill Hall’s trio. Bill’s ecentric hot fiddling will take him far and his partners on bass and guitar make up the best act of the night.”

The show opened at the Argentina Theatre; again the Bill Hall Trio are the hit of the show.

The act was basically very fast jazz numbers; ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, then ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee’, ‘Tiger Rag’, all with visual gags. The response was unbelievable; we realized that here we might have something that would have great potential in civvy street.

The Alexander Club, Rome, Harry Secombe
(l)
willing Johnny Mulgrew
(r)
to pay the bill. Bob Wayne standing
.

Life was really better than I had ever had it. First-class hotel accommodation, food, free all day, and a roaring success at night. Tomorrow didn’t matter, except it kept arriving. By day we’d swan around Rome with the inevitable visit to the Alexander Club.

We had a sword of Damocles. It was Bill Hall. He was itinerant, and we never knew where he was or what he was doing. After the show he’d disappear into the Rome night and its naughty areas and we wouldn’t see him till a few minutes before we were due back on stage. It got so bad that I would go on stage without him even being in the theatre; it was then I started to tell jokes just to hold the fort.

Spike on top of the Colosseum

BOLOGNA

Bologna

Sunday. We are off to Bologna. Where the hell is Bill Hall? Someone says Italy! We search the hotel, then his room; there’s nothing in it though he’s slept in both beds, left a tap running, and a pair of socks in the sink. Wait, what is this unshaven wreck with a violin case? It is he. He gets on the charabanc, ignoring the fact that we’ve been waiting half an hour. A desultory cheer greets him. Totally unmoved, he sits down. I watch a drip from his nose fall and extinguish his dog-end. I am seated at the back on a bench seat. I have placed my guitar case on the luggage rack and as we start, it falls off on to Hall’s head. “You have-a musica on yewer brayne,” says Mitzi. It is a good joke for a forty-three-year-old Hungarian accordion player.

We are heading inland and it’s snowing. NO car heaters in those days! We are climbing the narrow road up the Apennines, and it’s getting colder. All is not well. Nino the driver is shouting and praying in a stricken voice, the roads are very slippery, we’ll have to put the skid chains on. We set to, straining and swearing. “What a bleedin’ liberty,” says Gunner Hall. “How can you put bloody skid chains on and be expected to play the violin.” Lieutenant Priest answers that there’s no need to play the violin when putting the skid chains on but as Gunner Hall is just standing and watching, it would help if he did. Fingers are aching with cold; finally it’s done; a quick drink of hot tea from the thermos and we’re off again. We are at three thousand feet, heavy snow, icy roads, very dark and very cold. We have all gone quiet as we sense that the driver Nino is none too brave. Then the sound of Hall’s violin playing ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’. There’s a lot of laughter, then we all join in.

Varied lyrics: ‘I’m dreaming of a white mistress’, or ‘I’m steaming on an old mattress’. Quiet again. We pass a chiesa, it’s ringing out the Angelus; several of the Italian girls cross themselves.

“I don’t understand ‘em,” says Bill Hall. “Last night they were all screwing themselves silly.”

Lieutenant Priest passes sandwiches down the charabanc. “Ham and cheese,” he says. We are all stamping our feet and blowing into cupped hands. Sometimes we cupped our feet and stamped our hands: variety is the spice of life. It was an awful long cold boring darkness. It wasn’t a moment too soon when we arrived in Bologna; with the Tower of Dante looming into the night sky, we pull up at the Albergo Oralogio. A fin de cycle building. All is Baroque, even the porters.

We are soon in wonderful bedrooms, faded but lovely. I have a huge marble bath with gorgon-headed taps, and a giant brass shower rose in a wooden boxed-in cabinet. The curtains are damask. It’s a single room, so I’m safe from singing, farting, chattering Secombe.

“Hey, come and ha’ a drink, Spike.” It’s Mulgrew, he’s found a vino bar right next door. “We could do with one after that bloody journey.” OK. I join him. The manageress falls for Johnny.

Mulgrew set fair for free drinks

The vino bar is the meeting place of all the local footballers. They have money, do we have anything to sell. Mulgrew puts up his soul. I have a fine officer’s raincoat given me by my father. Can they see it? Not from here. I dash into the Albergo and return gasping. Oh, I’m in no hurry to sell, you understand, but how much? Five thousand lire. The word thousand disorientates the mind. Used to humble one, two, three in sterling but five thousand! Rich! rich! rich! Wrong! wrong! wrong! little international banker. It came to four quid: and it cost fifteen! It was brand new, and there it is going out the door to a football match. Still, four quid was four quid, but it wasn’t fifteen.

Tired by the trip, elated by the five thousand lire, pissed by the wine, I retired to my Baroque bedroom, laid out my mottled blue pyjamas, took a marble bath, a brass shower, got into the Baroque bed and rang for room service. There’s bugger all: room service is ‘finito’. What have they got? La fredda colazione!! Argggh, well it was better than nothing, though when it arrived I realized it wasn’t. What’s the old waiter hanging about for? All service after ten has to be paid for by cash. What? But I’m travelling on the King’s warrant, this trip is all found. Well find a tip. No! OK, he’ll call the manager. No, no, OK, I pay. Has he got change for a ten thousand lire note? Yes, he says, have I been selling raincoats to those footballers?

Again the Bill Hall Triumph. It’s getting to be a habit. With the raincoat money I brought an old Kodak camera. I filmed everything, see over:

The streets of Bologna were swarming with Italian Partisans wearing bandoliers, their belts stuffed with German stick grenades. They sauntered the sidewalks with a braggadocio air, waving their captured weapons and shouting Viva Italia. After a while it got a bit boring and Bill Hall said to one, “Le Guerre Finito mate.” We climbed the six hundred steps up the Tower of Dante, only to find graffiti: “Viva La Figa.”

Spike feeding the pigeons in a piazza in Bologna. Photograph of no particular merit other than that the photographer would one day arise and find Sir in front of his name
.

Christmas in Italy

O
ur last show in Bologna was on Christmas Day. It was all very strange. On Christmas Eve, after a show to a very inebriated audience, I wanted to be alone. I went to my bedroom and wished I could be back at 50 Riseldine Road with my mum and dad and brother. I wanted that little Christmas tree in the front room, the coal fire especially lit to ‘air the room’ for Christmas Day. The simple presents, a scarf, a pair of socks, a presentation box of 25 Player’s cigarettes, my brother’s box of Brittans soldiers, a drawing book with a set of pencils. Very modest fare by modern standards, but to me then, still simple and unsophisticated, it was a warming and magic day. The lunch, and
chicken
, that was something! In 1939, chicken was a luxury. And the tin of Danish ham! The huge trifle with custard and real CREAM. My father’s pride in opening the Port, pretending he was a savant, smelling the cork. “Ahhhh yes,” he would say, and pour it with the gesture of a sommelier at the Lord Mayor’s banquet.