Goodbye Soldier (2 page)

BARBARY COAST

B
arbary Coast
opened at the Argentina Theatre on Monday, 24 June. It was an immediate success and the Bill Hall Trio again the hit of the show. Wait till England heard about us, rich, rich, rich!!!

The Bill Hall Trio on stage in Rome, where the Pope lives.

It’s a busy show for me: I have to appear in sketches, in the Bowery Quartette singing ‘Close the Shutters, Willy’s Dead’, play trumpet in the orchestra and the guitar in the Bill Hall Trio – all at no extra charge. Bornheim has a dastardly trick. During my solo in ‘Close the Shutters’, he drops a lone ping-pong ball that bounces slowly and repeatedly and faster into the orchestra pit, where he has arranged for a man to drop a brick into a bucket of water. It was a simple but funny idea.

Of others in the show, the lead comic was Jimmy Molloy, about forty, overweight, a cockney, very left wing, his comedy all aggressive. After the war not a word was heard of him in the profession, so…There’s one born every minute and we had one who was, Sergeant Chalky White, ex-Marine Para Commando. What he was doing in the entertainment world was as baffling as finding Adolf Eichmann in the Israeli government. His only claim to fame was he once leapt off Bari Bridge into the harbour with an umbrella – all very clever, but there’s a limit to how many times. He was a bouncing all-noise cockney boy: if you were in a pub with him, you all
had
to sing and do ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’. He had a brain that would have fitted into a thimble with room to spare. He was i⁄c transport and scenery, both of which strained his mental capacities to the limit. Yes, he was a nice bouncing thirty-year-old cockney lad who should have stayed on his barrow. However, he was turned on by the bright lights and birds of show biz, so he wheedled his way into the show. He couldn’t act, he couldn’t sing, he couldn’t dance, but he could fight…So, for no reason at all, in the middle of the show a mock fight breaks out and we all have to pretend to be floored by Sergeant White.

“Don’t worry, I won’t ‘urt yer, I’ll miss you by a whisker.”

This didn’t work out. Every night he would mistime and render one of the cast unconscious. As I had boxed in the past, I rode his punches. Even then, to this day I have a chipped front tooth and a scarred inner lip. Finally, after we’d all been hit, Lieutenant Priest had to put a stop to the ‘Fight’. White sulked off.

“It’s professional jealousy,” he said.

White truly believed that after the war he would ‘become someone’. He did, a dustman.

Maxie – just Maxie – was a short, squat mid-European. A huge head dwarfed his body and his neck didn’t exist, so much so that he couldn’t turn his head but had to revolve his whole body. He spoke very little English. His ‘act’ consisted of bending iron bars on his head and shoulders, concluding with his bending an iron bar on his forearm.

“Maxie has developed this special muscle that ‘no living human has developed’. In this attempt, if he misses the muscle he could break his arm,” announced Molloy.

There followed great grunts and thwacks as the sweating strong man beat the shit out of himself, finally holding up the now bent bar and collapsing into the wings.

The programme of the Barbary Coast opening night, Rome, where the Pope lives.

The Barbary Coast Quartet – left to right, Milligan, Bornheim, Trowler, Escott.

ROMANCE AND TEA

27 June 1946

O
n the day she visited her mother, Toni arranged to meet me in the gardens of the Villa Borghese. There, we would have tea. I was walking on air! Our budding romance was the talk of the company.

“We will meeta under theee statue of Goethe,” she had said smilingly.

Of course, Frederick von Goethe the well-known German singer dancer! I wore my dark blue trousers, white silk shirt, satin blue tie, navy blue velvet jacket and my sensible strong brown outsized convulsed English shoes. I took one of Rome’s dying Fiat taxis. He had never heard of the statue of Frederick von Goethe, singer and dancer, but we kept driving till we found it.

I arrived early as I wished to choose a suitable pose to strike for when Toni arrived. I chose a Spanish oak against which I leaned like Gary Cooper and smoked a cigarette like Humphrey Bogart. By the time she arrived, I’d run out. Toni drew up in a taxi, I posed heavily as Robert Taylor. As she approached, all the juices in my metabolism started to revolve. I think I was actually vibrating: as she drew near I would appear to her as a blue blur. She was dressed in a blue polka-dot dress, her clean brown limbs glowed in the Roman sun and I was speechless in the face of her smile. “Buon giorno, Toni,” I said going light-headed, only the weight of my sensible English shoes keeping me earthbound. “Hello Terr-ee,”* she said and held out her hand.

≡ She had discovered I was also Terence and Terry. She liked the latter.

My first photograph of Maria Antoinetta Fontana – the Villa Borghese gardens, Rome, where the Pope lives.

I took it and she led me away. “Come,” she said.

Through leafy glades she led me to a teahouse. We sat at a table, all the others were deserted, how perfect! A crisp white-coated waiter still smelling of shaving soap attended us. Would I like tea, asks Toni. Yes, I say. What kind, she says. What’s she mean what kind? Tea, there’s only one kind. Toni orders in Italian and the waiter speeds to her bidding.

“Isn’t it a lovely day?”

Yes, Toni, and I love you.

“The trees are at their best this time of the year.”

Yes, Toni, and I love you.

The tea arrives – ah! and Italian pastries. Good old Char. Toni watches as I mix mine with half milk, five spoons of sugar and stir it into a treacly goo. What’s that she’s drinking in a tall glass enclosed in a silver holder? There’s a lemon floating in it. Careless waiter! Shall I get it out for her? What? It’s meant to be there? Russian tea? Oh, I’m sorry I can’t speak Russian, so how should I know?

Temple of Aesculapius. “You have temple like that in England?” No, I say. We have only Nat Temple and his diseased Band.

∗

The Italian pastries are all small multicoloured fiddly things. Haven’t they any jam doughnuts or currant buns? She pours tea like a duchess, eats like a bird, picks up pastries like an angel and sits upright ballerina-style. I had met a lady.

I pay the bill. I must have tipped too heavily as the waiter clutches his heart and runs crying to the kitchen.

“I show you nice things,” says Toni arising. “Having you ever seen Temple of Aesculapius?”

No I have never seen his temple; the only Temple I’ve seen is Shirley. We walk through boulevards of roses, many a small fountain laughing in the sun. We talked, I know we talked but it was all coming to me through a long tube. I was spellbound by this girl by my side. We saw the temple and I took an amateur snapshot to enshrine the moment.

∗

So we walk, walk, walk, talk, talk, talk. The walking involves my sensible brown English brogues. Let me describe them. At first glance they look like semi-deflated rugby balls. I have a small foot, size seven, but the shoe is size ten. The leather is convulsed, the soles are an inch thick with a rubber heel. I had bought them off a stall in Deptford. Basically, they made me look like a cripple. I wondered why people stood up for me in buses. Now Toni, elegant Toni, has noticed them. I suppose to her Italian mind they would appear to look like two giant stale salamis with shoelaces inserted. She tries to be tactful.

“Terr-ee, why you wear you Army boots with nice clothes?”

Army boots???? What was wrong with the girl? I told her these were my best shoes and the height of fashion in England in the 7
s
. 6
d
. range. I was the talk of Deptford! She stifled a laugh with her handkerchief. She is wearing delightful feather-light Ferragamo shoes.

“You only ‘ave one pair of shoes?”

Of course, that’s all one needs – one sensible pair weighing ten pounds each.

“You must buy one more best pair,” she said and we left it at that. That magic afternoon wandered on and still does…We stop at a stall and have a lemonade each. We sit sipping them through straws.

Toni points to the range of cakes and confectionary, “You have like this in England?”

Oh, yes, I tell her, we have very good sweets in England and I reel them off: spotted dick, rice and jam, plum duff, suet and treacle pud. Oh, yes, we have sweet things. I offer her a cigarette from my Erinmore Mixture tin. No, she ‘no lak smoke’, she thinks that smoking is dangerous to one’s health. Is she mad? Smoking is lovely: all the film stars do it, smoking never hurt anyone, I said. I smoke sixty a day and am as fit as a fiddle, I said, coughing and bringing up a ton of it.

We have arrived at the Spanish Steps. The flower sellers fade into drabness among the urgently growing flowers. Red roses! of course! I buy Toni a small bouquet – I had never bought flowers for a girl before. I passed them to her, they glowed red in the afternoon sun. She took them, looking intently at me as she did. Still looking at me, she withdrew one lone rose and gave it to me. It’s a moment in time frozen in my memory. I take the rose and try to put it into my buttonhole. But there isn’t one, is there, so I stick it in my pocket. Toni giggles, it sounds like water splashing in a pond.