Paul Daniels (12 page)

One more trip round my quivering body and then, ‘I didn’t know you were in the Army, Ted.’

Another slow walk around me and, ‘You must come and have tea with me sometime.’

Then he exploded, ‘HOW THE BLOODY HELL DO YOU, YOU ‘ORRIBLE LITTLE MAN, KNOW THE GOVERNOR OF THIS COLONY?!!’

‘I … I … I showed him a card trick,’ I stammered. ‘YOU DID BLOODY WHAT? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING?’ he yelped.

I explained my moonlighting misdemeanours, which I knew went right against Queen’s Regulations.

‘YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE OTHER JOBS WHILE YOU ARE A SOLDIER!’ he snorted with a mixture of astonishment and disgust.

‘You, you ‘orrible little man, will serve your time showing what you are worth to the rest of the Army on this island. Now get moving!’

I couldn’t believe how lucky I was when he doled out the punishment.

He sentenced me to perform in the Sergeants’ Mess at their next function the following month and I nearly put out my arms and kissed him. Nearly, but I decided against it.

From this developed other offers to appear in other messes and I was even paid a little extra to do the local army hospitals, the NAAFI and many of the ships in dock. This included the massive USA warships and aircraft carriers, which were like floating towns. We went up the side of one American aircraft carrier on a huge lift and when we went inside we got into a Cadillac to drive up to the other end of the ship. Their military seemed to live a little differently to us. Then I joined a concert party and from then on not only had a great time but never seemed to stop doing shows.

The buzz I got from performing was in danger of reducing my regular job to a boring day-to-day monotony of moving papers. The one thing that I had to do, I decided, was to avoid parades. I used my Orderly Room job to look up various
courses open to me.

Not every application to join a course was accepted, the Army must stay in control at all times, of course. Finally, I was enrolled into fencing. To my amazement, this involved swords. I thought fencing was something that would be useful when I got home to put around the house! No I didn’t, I’m just kidding.

One of the reasons I had applied for this was that it took place in a WRAC camp on the other side of the island and I thought I’d be surrounded by girls. I still hadn’t enjoyed the sexual experiences that I longed for and, although I had been in many of the local bars where the girls were cheaply bought, I often stood there like a little boy in a sweet shop. Perhaps an instinct deep inside me wanted to be introduced to the eroticism of life in a more natural way, without having to pay for it.

As it turned out, the girls in the WRAC were nowhere near as desirable as the Chinese girls in the cheongsams, and they were pretty tough-looking, too. With muscles that bulged in places I didn’t know existed, all thoughts of getting one of them between the sheets soon evaporated.

We soon found out that we were in no fit state to deal with them in any case, when on our first day the CSMI (Company Sergeant Major Instructor) proceeded to humiliate our manhood. This guy had just failed to be a professor of fencing, which ironically showed how good he was. A professor of fencing was a very rare thing, the qualifications are incredibly demanding and after years of intensive training, if you fail your exam on a technicality, this has no real reflection on your ability. This guy was mind-boggling.

CSMI Kirby was a pretty fit-looking chap, a bit on the short side, and was much tougher than he looked.

On day one of the course, wondering why we hadn’t been
issued with the normal protective gear and standing only in our shorts, he made us stand with our feet at right angles, slightly apart, with the right foot pointing forward. While bending our knees, we were shown how to lift our left arm and bend the wrist, which put us into an extremely camp position. I laughed; my pose held connotations I was not prepared to go along with. Having chuckled to the soldier next to me, I turned to see CSMI Kirby staring me in the face.

‘Name?’ he spat.

‘Daniels, Sarge!’

‘Come here.’

He motioned me to stand a few paces away from him and I looked back at the group of 20 other soldiers wondering what was coming next. CSMI Kirby took up a foil. This was a very flexible piece of metal with a quarter-inch stud on the end, and taking one look at my stiff body, lunged straight at me.

The force that hit me was unexpected and powerful. Feeling I had been hit in the bare chest by a champion boxer the wind went out of me and I fell backwards on to the ground gasping for air. Lying on my backside catching my breath, I touched my chest expecting to feel blood pouring out.

‘Get up, Daniels!’ came the retort.

As I struggled to my feet, the laughter of the group rang in my ears.

‘Now stand as I told you, because I’m going to hit you again!’

‘Errrrrr, no, Sarge! That’s all right, Sarge. I understand now, Sarge.’

My words were not sufficient to deter Kirby from his mission.

‘Stand as I told you! Feet at right angles, knees bent.’

Whoof! He hit me again. The impact, best described as a rock of ice hitting you at 50mph was enormous. This time I found that I had remained standing. As he sent me back to the
ranks with my head and body reeling, he explained how the legs act as a spring, taking the impact out of the thrust. I knew I would never forget it! I had also learnt how powerful a sword can be when it is used correctly.

We spent the rest of the day lunging at one another, with right arms going forward and stiff first; your left leg pushes your right leg forward; you go into a low lunge as your left arm drops and then raises to bring you back up – it was like being choreographed for a theatre show. Eight hours of lunging later, I had never been so grateful to see my bed.

Early next morning, I awoke with the reveille and a shout from our beloved CSMI, who marched straight over to our bunks and started to pull the sheets off. Every single man’s legs were bent into the shape we had kept them in all the previous day. Mine were so stiff I couldn’t even move them. CSMI Kirby grabbed me roughly by the ankles and yanked them straight. The pain was excruciating. It was absolute agony. His continued shouting and bawling was interspersed by the desperate screams and cries from men having their legs cracked back into position. Having had a quick wash down and a smartish breakfast, we were back on the parade ground where the first thing he said was, ‘lunge!’ I don’t think I’d heard men groan like that before!

Slowly, we learnt the art of the foil which is a touch-sensitive weapon. To my horror, CSMI decided to use me as the role model once more. Wisely, I decided to play along every step of the way this time. With sweeping movements around my bare skin, he demonstrated just how fast a sport fencing is. This is the reason why it has never taken off on television, as the viewer would not be able to see the incredibly fast reflex actions.

When you push against somebody else’s sword, their natural instinct is to push back. One of the many secrets was to use their impetus at that moment and taking the tip of your sword under theirs, move it over the top and strike them. As CSMI
demonstrated this, he hit me again.

He also demonstrated that, if the opponent does react quickly and their foil starts to come back then you must, as you are moving forward, dip your foil under theirs and continue the attack.

He came at me in a lunge, I tapped his sword out of the way, he pushed my sword away and started to go under, I came back, he started to retreat, I hit it the other way, rolled over the top of his foil and struck him. This was totally instinctive on my part. I didn’t work it out. I didn’t have time to work it out.

Without a moment to rejoice in my success he lunged at me again and with an instantaneous sweeping motion flipped his sword in the air, caught the tip of the foil, flicked it in an arc and the metal handle came down on my head. What a crack!

‘Don’t get clever with me, son!’ was the answer to my attempts to defeat him.

I finished the course with plenty of bruises, a lot of experience and a certificate in fencing that said I had ended up top of the course.

E
ven Elvis was drafted into the Army. He received his call-up papers in March 1958, but managed to postpone the big day so that he could finish his latest film King Creole. The king of rock ‘n’ roll saw his wage package drop from $100,000 to just $83.20 a month. When Elvis sang, he captured the hearts of millions of teenage girls around the world and this exercise was similar to that which many young recruits still had in mind.

Taking the stage at every possible service party now ate up most of my spare time, but I was still awaiting the chance to put my other undeveloped skills into practice, too. Surrounded by constant boasting from my mates and with the lack of natural opportunity, I finally decided to see if what they said about the girls on the colony was true.

I saw a beautiful Chinese girl while I was walking the streets of Victoria, the main town of Hong Kong. I was instantly in love. I’ll rephrase that – I was instantly in lust. This was the girl for me. I followed her for about an hour, trying to pluck up the courage to speak to her. This was the ultimate girl of my
dreams. Eventually she headed for the Kowloon Ferry. I had no reason whatsoever to go to Kowloon but I followed her on to the boat. Now or never. I decided to sit next to her and ask her the way to somewhere in Kowloon and that would break the ice. A deep breath and I moved to the seat next to hers. Just as I was about to speak she made that peculiar hacking noise in her throat, as you do, and spat over the side of the ship into the water.

I never said anything, I just moved away again.

Bars in Hong Kong were certainly the easiest places to pick up a girl, but several parts of the island were out of bounds for security reasons. There were gangs hiding in these areas that were keen to take on English army boys, or so we were told. The truth was probably that these were the red light areas of the capital and the Army didn’t want us straying off into forbidden territory.

We had been fully instructed in the dangers of casual sex and had watched the most grotesque film I have ever seen. Much worse than Boris Karloff or
Frankenstein
, these extended movies showed the end results of all the known venereal diseases available to mankind. With horrific close-ups of a man’s penis going black and festering, I wondered who on earth would have allowed a camera crew to film their shame in such detail. Staggering out of that lecture, I was determined that if that’s what could happen to you, I would never have sex at all. I’ll stick to card tricks, I thought. My resolve didn’t last, though, and with all the pressure from without and from within, I needed to prove the state of my manhood once and for all.

Hong Kong’s high level of prostitution was caused by the poverty that existed on the island. The bars were full of girls trying to make a quick dollar, though I didn’t really frequent them, as I am not drinking man and I am still not at ease in bars.

In the late 1930s, a female English MP returned from Hong
Kong determined to stamp out the legal prostitution that existed there. The British Government would not condone legal prostitution on one of its colonies and immediately outlawed it. The result was that it continued underground and unchecked by doctors. Within two years, venereal disease was rife. The Army stance at that time was that all soldiers should abstain from sex. The story was that they put something in your tea called bromide. A classic gag was the two very old soldiers sitting on a park bench and one said to the other, ‘do you remember that stuff they used to put in our tea when we were in the Army?’

‘Oh aye,’ says the other, ‘what about it?’

‘Well, I think it’s just starting to work!’

Preventing soldiers from having sex was an almost impossible task. The irony was that contraceptives were freely available from the medical centre. I discovered that the condoms were so rough, thick and long that it was like wearing a rubber glove over your willy. They were more of a laugh than a practical solution and came in very useful as balloons for parties. Nevertheless, the serious fear of contracting VD remained deeply ingrained in every soldier and even more vividly so after viewing that ghastly film. Each one of us would daily and secretly inspect every part of our bodies for the slightest sore, just in case.

The slowly rotating fans did nothing to cool the effects of the hot tropical weather and vulnerable parts of everyone’s anatomy were constantly sweating. Underarms and between legs were the worst, where the wetness caused all manner of soreness. I got heat rash and tried to avoid the medical centre but I finally gave in one day and covered my embarrassment with bravado as I showed the nurse the red patches of skin all over my privates. The nurse smiled knowingly and left, returning a few moments later with a huge jar containing a
thick purple cream. This he slapped straight on to my testicles, his smile unbroken as I yelled in pain as the stinging cream took effect. Leaving the surgery, I ran up the road flapping my shorts in an unsuccessful attempt to cool the fire. I had seen men performing this ritual before and often wondered what they were doing; now I knew!

One night, the sexual urges got too much and I left camp with the express purpose of endorsing my maleness. I knew exactly where to go, as the bars were not the only places where a female body could be purchased. Strolling slowly down the forbidden avenue, I was quickly approached by a young, thin Chinese girl. She hardly spoke any English so I just nodded when she asked, ‘You want some fun?’ Excitement and embarrassment churned away inside me. Fear, too.

Finding myself being led into a discussion over services and prices, I really wasn’t sure what was what. Her English was so bad and some of her offers contained words I had never heard before and some I was happy never to discover the true meaning of. A
gam
was apparently a very old French word for one form of quick relief.

Finally agreeing a price, I followed this girl, who would have been in her mid-twenties, on a half-mile walk to the place of paradise. Reaching a high-rise dilapidated tenement block, we began climbing the stairs. The paint was peeling, paper hung off the walls, parts of the ceilings were hanging down and as the stairs creaked I wondered if we would reach our destination without a serious accident. The excitement of the unknown became mixed with the fear of being found by the military police who toured that dubious district.

Several flights of stairs later, we had climbed so high that I thought about the need for some extra oxygen to help me through the task ahead. The sex drive must be a very powerful thing to have got me this far. Eventually, she led us through a
broken door and out on to a flat roof where an old wooden hut awaited. Never having seen a shed like this in anybody’s garden back home, let alone in Hong Kong, I was taken aback to see that it contained several rooms.

Motioning me to lie on the ramshackle bed in one corner, she ceremoniously stripped off and disappeared into another room. Waiting silently in anticipation, but unsure whether to get aroused or not, I heard laughter and chatter coming from the room next door. Her family lived there!

Moments later, she returned with another very, very young girl, who, she explained, was her sister. This poor girl was clearly in training for the job, as she apparently wanted her to see how it was done. For a first-timer like me, it was the ultimate turn-off and, protesting, I prepared to leave. Shooing her sister back next door, the Chinese girl was clearly not keen to lose her client and calmed me back down on to the bed.

Lying motionless on the blanket, the naked streetwalker awaited my attentions. I knew what to do, but not how to do it. It was awful and there were no emotions whatsoever. The hooker just lay there because it was simply a job to her. I was in a strange state of mid-arousal, apprehension and awkwardness, but managed to make contact with what felt like a roll of sandpaper. I can distinctly remember thinking that this was not as good as card tricks!

It was over awfully soon and I fled thinking that now my curiosity was assuaged, it would be the last time I would attempt that. I thought sex was awful. The knowledge that I had used a condom did not arrest the abject terror of catching VD and I spent the next few weeks searching my body for the tiniest pimple. Nightmares in which my male organ went black and dropped off during a parade haunted me for weeks.

Having made a contract with myself not to go alone into the run-down areas of Hong Kong again, I took little convincing
that filling a weekend’s leave with two other mates would do me the world of good. Macau was a tiny island off the southern coast of mainland China and could be easily reached by a short ferry ride. It was known as a place of fun and excitement and would surely prove to be an excellent choice for a mini break.

I’ll change one name here to protect the guilty. Peter, Jack and I arrived after a long ferry ride, at 2.00am. The hour of the day apparently didn’t matter to the islanders on tri-shaws and rickshaws who immediately surrounded us with an invitation to see a wrestling match. The concept of watching this sport at such an early hour was ridiculous and we asked to be taken directly to our hotel. We were going to make the most of our break and seize the opportunity to escape the army life as much as possible and the Grand Hotel was the best available.

Each floor had a floor-boy who was responsible for the wellbeing of the residents under his charge. Providing us with details of his room service he also asked us, ‘… you been see wrestling match yet?’

‘No,’ I said, becoming puzzled, as this must be a very famous local sport. Making a mental note that this was evidently something not to be missed, we bade goodnight to one another and I soon climbed into my luxury bed and almost immediately sank into the beauty of ‘never-never-land’.

Being a tropical venue and not having the benefit of air conditioning, the walls stopped about 18in from the ceiling, so that the ceiling fans could circulate the air across the entire floor of the hotel. It also meant that you could hear everything going on in every other room on your floor. I must have been tired to have fallen asleep in that environment. Shouts and giggles coming from the hallway brought me back to consciousness and my watch told me it was 10.00am. Breakfast was over, but something else was going on. I opened my door only to see a long line of women outside. The queue, consisting of black,
white, Chinese, blondes, brunettes and redheads was snaking its way into Jack’s room. Reaching the front of the column I could see Jack sitting up in bed like merry Old King Cole as each girl filed slowly past.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I demanded.

‘I’m auditioning for some company for tonight,’ came the reply and a knowing smile.

With the help of the floor-boy extolling their virtues, Jack was openly auditioning for some ‘extra’ services to spice up his visit to Macau. Party-pooper me stopped the proceedings and the girls were ushered away, as we prepared for our first day of sightseeing.

Sixty-four kilometres across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong, the visitors’ guide explained, Macau had derived its name from a Chinese goddess. It had a distinctly European flavour with winding narrow streets and alleys peppered with churches, colonial mansions and elegant inns. Throughout 400 years of history, Macau had been a Portuguese stronghold and a centre of culture in the Far East. Strangely, the beliefs, arts and customs of traditional China thrive in Macau, where a devout, conservative community somehow managed to compete in the rat-race while celebrating their responsibilities to their ancestors and gods. Tree-shaded country lanes, wide sandy beaches, lush pine forests and modern hotels all reminded me of the holiday I had always dreamed of. Macau was obviously a unique blend of cultures, people, aromas, flavours and styles and I was sorry I wasn’t staying there longer

We took excursions to the town and surrounding countryside, but found ourselves constantly being pestered to go to a wrestling match. At the end of a tiring day as a tourist, I returned to the hotel early for a well-needed rest. The ground floor consisted of a huge casino and seemed to continue its wheeling and dealing 24 hours a day. Even though I’ve never
been a gambling man, I was still interested in the concept, mathematics and skill of the procedure. Cautiously entering the unexpected hush of a busy room, I was strangely aware that 100 eyes were watching me. A huge, fat, ‘Buddha-like’ man sat operating the dice cage which would be rotated to decide the result of the bets being placed.

Standing by the table, watching every move and looking like a flash and confident British lad, proud of my newly acquired manipulation skills, I waited for my moment to declare my ‘oneness’ with the overweight croupier. I began to perform my coin roll under his nose and wondered if he was impressed. Turning his head towards me, the ‘Buddha’ hit a stack of
ten-cent
pieces with his finger and split them perfectly in half, with the top pile dropping alongside the bottom half. He grabbed the two piles and riffle-shuffled them back together with one hand. With my eyes nearly popping out of my head, I was bowled over with the skill he had just demonstrated and instantly felt incredibly stupid having shown him my pathetic little coin trick.

I was about to leave when I was halted by the arrival of a huge black limousine outside. An enormously obese Chinese man alighted and came straight into the room, carrying a large black suitcase. Placing a mammoth pile of paper notes on to the number nine in silence, the skilled ‘Buddha’ swung the dice cage and, miraculously, number nine was shown. This really was straight out of the movies, I reckoned.

Still in a complete and still silence, assistants pulled all the money off the other tables and put it into their client’s suitcase. Every person around the table received a large-value note, as the eminent guest walked straight out, got back into the car and vanished. We were obviously being encouraged to keep the experience to ourselves. I didn’t know what had happened and I was wise enough not to ask.