Peace Work (18 page)

We are now in Tuscany: on our left the sea, on the right numerous vineyards, all looking uniform, neat and tidy, all heavy with grapes awaiting the gathering. I was reminded of Omar Khayyam’s ‘I wonder what the vintner buys, with stufFhalf as precious as that which they sell’. In another life, I would like to have been a vintner.

We are climbing into hilly country. It is getting overcast and so are we. Soon it starts to rain. “This will do the garden good,” said Bornheim. I borrow his
Union Jack
newspaper. What was happening in the world apart from this tour?

Herbert Morrison promises full employment for many years ahead

Spanish Frontier Sealed

RUSSIA ASKS AMERICA FOR BIG LOAN

Nuremberg Defence Opening Delayed

Ah, here is the best one;

HITLER’S EX-SECRETARY ARRESTED

—the copy reads. She is said to have lost none of her fanaticism for the Nazi cause and prays nightly beneath a picture of Hitler who, like God, appears to be deaf. Ah, a funny one: a blood donor in Australia had so much alcohol in his blood that the recipient got pissed. So, all that is going on in the world! What a jolly place it is.

The rain leaves off. Through the afternoon, we are getting travel-numb and I might say traveller’s bum – there’s a limit to how long a bum can be sat on. After three hours, there are cries of distress – people want to relieve themselves. Luigi pulls over by a wooded verge. The ladies disappear into the trees to the left and the men to the right, and never the twain shall meet. “I think that I shall never see,” says Born-heim, “A poem lovely as a tree.” So saying, he lets go against one. The floodgates are opened and we all return with satisfied smirks. (Are your smirks satisfied, dear reader?)

At Farno, we leave the sea and travel inland – two hundred miles to go. “It’s too bloody long,” complains Hall. “We should have stayed at Riccione for the night.” For once we all agree with Hall. What a strange man he was: he looked permanently unshaven, he was six foot tall and even thinner than me. If anyone has seen an illustration of Paganini, then this man had the same deep-set burning eyes. I think he also had burning arms and legs. He was the epitome of the English eccentric. Why, why wouldn’t he ever send his underpants and socks to the laundry? He would never say.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Mulgrew. “If he sent ‘em to a laundry, they’d send them to a solicitor.”

“Anyone like a sweet?” says Lieutenant Priest, handing around a bag of bull’s-eyes. Ah! My childhood favourite, black with thin white stripes. I used to wonder how they made the stripes. To this day, I don’t know.

Ah! Luigi is slowing down, he’s stopping for petrol! God, how exciting! We needed this to keep our morale up. Some of us get off. The petrol station sells bits and pieces. I buy a packet of nuts of unknown origin. I give some to Toni. They taste like almond-flavoured cardboard. “
Che bruto
,” she says, spitting them out. So did anybody want to buy a packet of carboard nuts? Only eaten once, must sell, owner going abroad. Toni wants to sleep. I put my arm around her and she drops off. I stick it until my arm goes numb. Wake up, Toni, it’s arm back time. My circulation is worse than
Blackwood’s Magazine
.

We are travelling through great vistas of farming land. They are still ploughing with great white oxen like the cattle we see on Roman statuary. It seems a timeless land – at places there are no signs of the twentieth century except our Charabong. It’s like a journey through a time capsule. I light up cigarette number upteen.

“Ah, ah,” says Mulgrew, “don’t put them back.” He takes one with a sweet, forced smile.

“You’re not out of them
again
, ”’ I say.

“Tis better to give than receive,” he says, making the sign of an invisible cross.

Poor Johnny, one day this appalling habit would kill him.

John Angove, seated at the front, wobbles to the back of the coach. “Anything exciting happening this end?” he said.

“No,” says Bornheim. “Try the middle.”

Angove shrugs his shoulders, “I’m bored to death.”

“It’s no good you coming up here and moaning about being bored to death,” I said. “If you must know, at this end we’ve been bored to death and then bored back to life again.”

Putting on a Groucho Marx demeanour, I added, “So think youself lucky my man. When I was your age, I was seven, and, another thing, goodbye.”

Toni had never heard of Groucho Marx, but then she’s never heard of Brockley SE 26! I have to explain what the Marx Brothers are like. It wasn’t easy, it was like trying to convince Quasimodo that he ought to enter for the pole vault. I explain that Groucho always walks with his knees bent. “Why?” says Toni. Why? For no reason at all,
that
’s why! I’ll say this, she
tried
to understand.

So we rumble on. By eight that night, we enter the northern suburbs of Rome down the Via Flamania. We all give a groan of relief, the Italians bravely strike up a song and Luigi pulls up outside the Albergo Universo. It’s not over yet. There’s the unloading of the baggage by two little porters and we all register at reception. And there is the lesbian manageress. “Ahh, Terr-ee,” she says and seemed genuinely pleased to see me.

“Before we all break up,” announces Priest, “the show is tomorrow at 7.30 a.m. Coach leaves here at 6 a.m. prompt – Bill Hall, please note.”

I’m in a room with Mulgrew again. He dumps his kit on the bed and hurries out for a drink in the vino bar next door. Would I like to join him, as he hasn’t much money? Swine. OK, I’ll be down when I’ve settled in. I lay out my clean pyjamas (laundered in Vienna) on the bed, then a quick wash, then to the vino bar to meet Mulgrew who is ahead by a couple of glasses. “You’re just in time,” he says, “I’ve run out of money.” Wine is cheap, a few lire a glass, so Mulgrew and I down about four each and we go back for dinner. Toni and Marisa are at a table when we join them. Toni doesn’t like me drinking.

She waves a finger at Mulgrew, “You teach Terr-ee drink like you, you
callivo
Johnny,” she says like a schoolmarm.

Mulgrew is totally bemused. “Just hark at her,” he says.

I’m hungry and looking forward to my dinner and backwards to the trip (Eh?): minestrone, then lasagne washed down with Chianti. Great, that’s better. I feel strong enough to go to sleep on my own. Tomorrow, Toni wants to take me to have lunch at her mother’s flat. Fine, OK. I take Toni up to her room. Curses, she’s sharing with Luciana, so it’s a kiss goodnight and back to bed. Mulgrew has gone back to the vino bar having borrowed money off me. Still, he always pays me back. You have to take him by the throat, but he always pays back. So, I can enjoy the luxury of clean pyjamas. I take a quick bath and then don them. I love the smell of freshly laundered clothes. I read my Bronte book for a while and then drop off to sleep. At some time I distantly hear Mulgrew come in and racket around the room. He is humming a tune broken only by a smoker’s cough. There’s very little difference between the two.

Morning comes bright and sunny. Mulgrew and I lie in bed smoking.

“What you doing today?” he says. I tell him I think I’m having lunch with Toni and her mother. “Getting your feet under the table, eh?”

“It’s not like that. I have been genuinely accepted into the family, I am a
persona grata
.”

At this, he guffaws. There’s no winning with him.

I must look my best for the lunch. I put aside my khaki travelling clothes and lay out my blue ensemble. I borrow a fresh razor blade from Mulgrew. It’s strange, in those days people lent freely – soap, cigarettes, money. What happened, then? I shave very carefully, avoiding any nicks or cuts, have a shower, first testing the shower rose. I dress as far as shirt, trousers and tie, then Brylcreem my hair, all the while watched by the bemused Mulgrew. “You’re looking loverly, darling,” he says. And, though I say it, I was looking lovely. God, I’ve only got fifteen minutes to have breakfast. I dash downstairs to the dining-room. No Toni. I order toast and jam and tea. Still no Toni. I ask John Angove where she is. She had breakfast earlier; also, Lieutenant Priest has some mail for me. Lovely!

I find Lieutenant Priest in the foyer. He is phoning Naples HQ. Still engaged on the phone he hands me two letters and a small parcel. I can tell by the overcautious wrapping and endless knotted string that it is from my mother. As to the contents, it’s marked socks. In the bedroom, I eagerly unwrap it. It contains chocolate, cigarettes and pile suppositories. Ah, how sweet, something for each orifice. The letters are from my mother and ex-girlfriend, Lily Dunford of 45 Revlon Road, Brockley SE26. Mother harps on about not forgetting to go to church. She thanks me for the photo of Toni that I sent her, but feels she would rather have had a medical report. Don’t forget to put paper on the toilet seat. If I can’t, do it standing up, etc. Lily Dunford’s letter is really just a progress report on her life. The man she had ditched me for had left her. But for Toni, I might have made it back with her again. Too late, ‘the bird has flown and has but a little way to fly’ (Omar Khayyam).

I break open the chocolate bar, giving some to Mulgrew. “Fruit and Nut,” he mutters, “my favourite.” But then, if it was free,
anything
was favourite with him. What is he going to do today? If he can get an advance of wages he’ll go the vino bar and then the Alexander Club. Then? Then back to the vino bar.

I buzz Toni on the interphone. “Good morning, Toni,
buon giorno
,” what time are we going to Mother’s?
Mezzogiorno
. Good, that gives me time for a job long overdue – the cleaning of my trumpet and guitar. I dismantle the trumpet and run hot water through it. I dry and polish the valves, re-oil them and put them back in the cylinders. A general overall polish and that’s that. The guitar, I give a thorough polishing and a set of new strings. What a busy little bee I am. Midday and Toni, all shining and new, is waiting in the foyer. We stroll out and flag down an ancient Fiat taxi. Toni gives him the address and we sit back and watch Rome flash by. It’s a city of unending interest. We pass the great piazzas with their vibrant gushing fountains, the Colosseum, the National Monument, then into the suburbs.

Via Appennini is on a slight slope. The taxi stops at 53 but starts to roll back as his brakes are dodgy, so we have, to leap out at the run. Mrs Fontana is at the window looking out for us. Gioia, the maid, opens the door, is all blushes and embarrassment.

Toni’s mother greets us. “Ah, Terr-ee,
come sta
?” I am
sta beni
and running out of Italian.

We are seated in the lounge where we are joined by her sister Lily. “Ah, Terr-ee,
come sta?
” I am still
sta bent
.

Soon I am lost to view as Toni and her mother exchange all their news. I can understand bits of the conversation with words like,
si, no, buona
. Now and then Toni translates bits concerning me. Rather like discussing the dog with an occasional ‘Good boy’ and a pat on the head. Lily speaks broken English. She wants to come to the show. Neither she nor her mother have seen it. I promise two tickets. Toni’s mother works in an Italian tourist agency called CIT which, when pronounced, sounds like shit. Lily works as a secretary and between the three of them they earn enough to live modestly well.

It’s a splendid lunch: spaghetti then chicken liver risotto with white wine. Mrs Fontana asks about my family. I explain my brother is still in the Army and
almost
an officer. My father is in Fleet Street and
was
an officer. Only my mother has never been an officer. I plug the fact that my mother is a very good Catholic. This is well received as Mrs Fontana is herself a good Catholic. As yet, I haven’t told her I am a bloody awful Catholic. When do I want to come and stay? Is tomorrow all right,
domani? Si si buona allora domani
.

Toni and I taxi back to the hotel. I want to write some letters, so retire to my room. I dash one off to Mother and another for Lily Dunford. I tell my mother that not only am I putting paper on the seat but, just in case, I do it standing up. Dear Lily Dunford, I commiserate with her over the loss of her husband (HA HA HA). After carrying the torch for her for nearly nine years, like an evil swine I felt some measure of revenge. I didn’t tell her I was in love again, but said perhaps we could meet when I came back to London and see what happened. Good luck (HA HA HA). Yes, revenge is sweet but not fattening.

∗

Maria Marini from Vol. 5 has turned up! I can’t quite recall how she knew I was in Rome, but she did. I supply her with two seats for the show. Will I see her after? Yes, for a little while. Can I come home with her so she can be like ‘A waf to you’? (See Vol. 5, p. 138 or ring the police.) So that I’m not trapped, I tell Toni about Maria and explain that we are ‘just good friends from the waist up’. She accepts my story, but after my Vienna episode she is a little bit suspicious and, for that matter, so am I.

∗

First night at the Teatro Argentina: very good show and a great first-night audience. Feel very good, feel lively, feel Toni. I’m healthy with lire, so I ask her if she’d like to go out to dinner. Yes, she knows a place I would like. Great. We grab a taxi with a driver who sings all the way, badly. The restaurant is the Trattoria San Carlo. It is small, bustling with waiters and pretty full. Nevertheless, we get a table in a corner near the resident accordion player. He plays, very
sostenuto
, Italian favourites.

“
Che desidera signore?
” says an
allegro
waiter.

I’m desperate for a drink to bring me down from my post-show ‘high’. “
Una bottiglia di Orvieto abboccata, perfavore
,” I say in ill-pronounced Italian.