Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (16 page)

PSYCHIATRIST:

Aircraftsman Sellers, you say that you’ve been hearing tigers.

SELLERS:

Yes, sir, there was one outside my hut.

PSYCHIATRIST:

Do you know there are no tigers in Ceylon?

SELLERS:

Well there are now.

PSYCHIATRIST:

It says, and I quote: “I
heard
a tiger growling.”

SELLERS:

Yes sir.

PSYCHIATRIST:

You’re sure it wasn’t some other carnivore? I mean, lots of growls sound the same.

SELLERS:

Not this one, sir, this growl had stripes on.

At immediately-it-was-ready, the festivities started.

The Dance Hall is packed. For the first time Italian civilians are allowed in. A drunken fug hangs over everything. They’ve been drinking since dawn. In Alexander Square tables are laid with myriad edibles, a display that would have been a feast in rationed England. Fairy lanterns bedeck the trees, wine is flowing freely and the fountain is full of red chianti. It looks wonderful. On the hill the giant bonfire is alight. Fireworks are exploding in the streets under the great display of orchestrated electric lights.

V-E Night in Merry Maddaloni

We’ve never played so good. Charlie Ward sings: “We’re gonna get lit up when the lights go on in London.” It’s like an anthem. A great chorus comes from the dancers. Colonel Startling Grope has sent us up six bottles of Asti Spumante! The evening wears on, the dancers wear out. A GI joins us. His name is Ken Mule. He sings with the band. What a find — he sounds like Dick Haymes! More booze is coming up, but I’m keeping mine down. At two o’clock the dance finishes, but some of the band are ‘into it’ and go on jamming. I creep off and accost lovely Rosetta Page. We get a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of Valpolicella. Soon we are snogging.

“Oh, no, Spike, oh no.”

“Oh yes, Rosetta, oh yes.”

The sandwiches are crushed between us and are toasted.

“No ladies allowed in male billets.” The voice comes from the mouth under the little moustache of a Regimental Policeman.

“Haven’t you heard? The war’s over.”

“Never mind that, out!” He makes a gesture.

I am not a violent man. I take him by the battledress and crash him against the wall. “Do you want to fuckin’ die?” He doesn’t want to die, and leaves.

Drink, drink, drink. Giggle, grope…Somewhere in the wee hours a long way away, sitting on the steps, someone is shaking me. It was me! No! It was Steve! He is naked except for his shirt. “Rosetta darling,” I say, “how you’ve changed.”

He giggles. “Isn’t it time you went to bed?” Yes. I was up about midday, surveying the wreckage of the previous night — most of which appeared to be me.

The CPA band that played on V-E Night +1. The picture has been shrunk owing to financial difficulties at the publishers
.

2
nd
Day of V-E Festivities

A
band from the Central Pool of Artists will play tonight, so you chaps can have a jolly good rest,” says Major New.

I’m lying in bed that morning ‘resting’, but for the love of me I don’t feel good. I feel myself all over but none of me feels good. I seek out Rosetta! Is she free tonight, or is she charging? Sorry, she’s got a date at Caserta Palace. So! She’s being unfaithful to me. Is it another man? No, it’s another Regiment.

“Darling, will you be my first wife?”

Never mind, there’s other distractions like housey-housey in the canteen, run by Sergeant ‘Dolly’ Grey, the Robert Maxwell of Maddaloni. “And another little dip,” he cackled. “Number nine, doctor’s orders.” As the afternoon wore on and his winnings mounted, I saw him visibly changing into a bent, hand-rubbing, cackling Scrooge. By five o’clock it was ‘Castor oil’ — we’d been cleaned out. I walked out with ten lire which had the purchasing power of a bootlace. Lewis! The Yew!
He’d
have shekels. Yes, he’ll lend me two thousand lire — after all, we were friends. I would just sign this paper consigning my entire worldly goods to him in the event of non repayment. So, as a bonded warehouse owned by Lewis, I went with him to the AFHQ Victory ball. Wow! Walking up those steps!

Casorta — Palazzo Reale — Scalone (prospetto)

The sound of a dance band wafts through the corridors. A girl is singing ‘I was taken for a sleigh ride in July’. It sounds good. What a surprise! It’s an all-American all-girl orchestra led by (it was a well-known name but I can’t remember!) -some of you may remember, their signature tune was ‘In the Blue of the Evening’ or, if you’re colour blind, the Brown of the Evening. They are all dressed in ice-white gowns looking like all-American women. Vestal virgins, hygienically wrapped, untouched by human hand, about to be debased in a TV series called Dysentery.

Such a cosmopolitan crowd! Greek sailors, Polish colonels, Yugoslavian partisans, Italian generals, Hindu captains, or as my father would say, a bunch of Wogs. Oh! the fun a xenophobe could have had with a shot gun! “Who’s paying for all this?” said Steve, as we raped the buffet table of food and wine.

I manage to get an American WAC. “Do you like waltzes?”

I asked, avoiding ‘Harry Lauder appeared in Glasgow’ routine. “Nhart Rilly,” she said. (Not Really, she said.)

“Where are you from?”

“The Yewknighted Staits.”

I guessed that, I said. Then why did I ask? She works as a ‘Clurk to Generil Muark Clurk’. I estimated her typing speeds would be anything up to several words a day. A Pakistani orderly cuts in. Just wait till she sees his, I thought.

“We’re supposed to be having a good time,” said Steve, guzzling Asti Spumante.

“Yes, I suppose this is a good time,” I said, guzzling Asti Spumante.

“Are you suggesting it could be better,” he said, guzzling Asti Spumante.

“Well it would be nice if we could find a couple of birds,” I said, guzzling Asti Spumante. “What I need is Romanceeeee.” And what do I get? — a Yewish Sergeant and Asti Spumante!

We bustle our way out to the rear gardens. There is a sea of tables with candles. We choose one and Asti Spumante. It’s a warm May night, the sound of the fountains is interwoven with the dance music. Lewis dumps a large jug of wine on the table. “Reinforcements,” he says. I have run out of money again. Would Steve give me a mortgage on my parents? We take a stroll on the great lawns. “It’s all mad, isn’t it?” says Steve. “I mean we don’t belong here. This,” he makes a sweeping gesture, “this is where the Bourbons and their satin ladies should be cavorting.”

He was right. “We are out of time with this place,” I said. “We belong at the WVS with Egg and Chips.”

There we are, wiping the eggs from the plate with bread in the canteen with the Italian Manageress with the huge bum. It ought to be in
The Guinness Book of Records
, but right now it’s in Caserta. “Two teas, signorina,” says Steve. I light up a cigarette, sip tea. We both sit staring, that end-of-the-day stare. You see it in pubs, tubes, restaurants, intervals at the theatre; always looking away from the company you’re in; something out there that will make the present more exciting? Curiosity killed the cat? It may have found a better cat. My watch says V-E night plus one is over, and we are in tomorrow. My God, it’s all going to happen again. I rise from my seat, clutch the air and moan. “The filessss, the filessss.”

“Yes,” said Steve, “it’s time for beddy-byes so you’ll be a nice strong boy for your filing.”

I put on my beret, that bloody awful new beret! They had taken our forage caps from us and given us a thing that looked like a pudden cloth, or something that Auntie Rita wore to visit the Geriatric Ward. No matter how you wore it, it looked like a cow pat stuck on your head, about to slide off down your face.

The passion wagon drops us at Alexander Barracks. The roistering is in full flood and sounds like a farmyard on fire. One last drink, my friend.

“Ahhh Terence!” It’s Colonel Startling Grope. “Where have you been hiding these last two days?”

I tell him. “In my beret, Stanley Sir.” Come on, have a Strega with him.

“Cheers Terence!” He holds up the yellow liquid. “It’s all over.” He was right, most of it went over him.

The night died like a beheaded chicken; long after the head was off, the body went on dancing. I lay in bed, the distant sound of the CPA dance band echoing up the stairs…

Peace

T
o the victor the spoils. My spoils are a set of files. Big News! Startling Grope is leaving us.

“I’m being bowler-hatted,” he said. (
I
thought he would have been brown-hatted.) “I leave next week, Terence, and,” he tapped his nose, it stayed on, “I’ve left you a little present.”

Me? A present? What is it, a pot of Gentlemen’s Relish? A Unique Device with latent Screws? A Germolene dispenser? A leather-backed Divining Kit, a complete set of Marsh-mallows, a Devious Appliance with lubricating points? Any of these could be mine!

“Who’s taking your place here, Stanley Sir?”

“Nobody.”

“Well that doesn’t speak very well of you.”

“The job is being run down, Terence.”

“It was more than run down, it’s down right crummy.”

So departed the Colonel, and the pretty boys of O2E breathed a sigh of relief. Bending down would never be as dangerous again.

The Great Neapolitan Band Contest

56 Area are holding a Dance Band Contest. We’ll wipe the floor with ‘em.
FIRST PRIZE FOR SUPERB LEAD AND SOLO TRUMPET, GUNNER MILLIGAN
. We congregate in the rehearsal room. What to play?

“What’s wrong with Dinah?” says Manning.

“Rheumatism,” is the answer. We choose ‘Moonlight Serenade’, ‘Two O’clock Jump’ and ‘The Naughty Waltz’.

“You see! Those numbers will lose us the contest,” predicts Jim, one of the first people in 1939 to say “The war will be over by Christmas.” We practise and practise, every note and nuance is observed, we even play the specks of fly shit that land on the music. Nothing is wasted.