Where Have All the Bullets Gone? (30 page)

“Two hundred, three hundred,” Bill Hall is recounting his money. Another foot and that car would have killed us. “Three hundred and twenty…”

Nice Surprisey-Poo

Y
ou are very lucky fellows,” says Reg O’List, who is now not singing ‘Begin the Beguine’. Why are we lucky fellows? We have been chosen to appear on the bill of the Finale of the Festival of Arts. This turns out to be nothing more nor less than a Military ‘Opportunity Knocks’ and, after all the contestants have done, while the summing up is going on, there is to be entertainment by the ‘professionals’. Any extra money? No. Sod. OK, the Pros are Stan Bradbury, a song-plugger from the UK, the Polish Ballet, ourselves and HELLLLLPPPPPP Gracie Fields and her singing! It’s too late now, we’ve said yes and they’ve aired the beds.

“You’ll only be there for forty-eight hours,” said Lieutenant, O’List. That would be long enough for me to carry out my solemn promise to Maria Marini that I would come back and marry her from the waist down.

“Grade Fields,” said Bill Hall, like he’s announcing the Doppelgänger.

“Don’t worry,” says Reg O’List, “I’ve put you on before her, so if you hurry up you can be out in the street before she starts singing. I’ll try and keep the theatre doors shut so that the sound doesn’t get out.”

Secombe, he’s coming too, it’s about time he came too. Is he going to fill the stage with soap? No. “I’m on the spotlights,” he says, through his chattering, screaming and farting. Secombe on the spotlights?? That’s like putting a man with epilepsy on a tightrope. Secombe can’t keep still, he can’t concentrate on anything except screaming, shaving and farting. We’ll see. “I’ve been specially chosen to put the spotlight on Gracie Fields in ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’,” he says, like the Captain of the
Titanic
.

Yet again, the charabanc takes the chosen to the Holy City. This time it’s just the Trio, Secombe, and a few spare wanks who will do ‘odd jobs back stage’. I have no idea what odd jobs back stage are. Massaging curtains back to life? Mud-wrestling with electricians?

It’s the old Albergo Universo, and our lesbian javelin-throwing manager with her fifty-six-inch chest. Can we visit her for a drink after the show? Yes. Have we any free seats? Yes, how many does she want? Seventy-three. She settles for six.

Friday March 1
st
. We sit in the stalls, watching the amateurs rehearsing for the finals. They are being ‘produced’ by Major Murray Leslie, Royal Army Service Corps, an ideal corps to produce theatricals. A short dark singer is going through ‘Just a song at twilight’. We all know the joke about the short man who looks as though he’s been hit by a lift: well, this is the bloke, he’s been hit by one from above and another one coming up underneath. He has a good voice, but looks like a semi-straightened-out Quasimodo, and worse, he has ape-like arms. Major Leslie suggests that when the song reaches the climax he raises his arms gradually; they look like two anti-aircraft guns being raised to fire. But there you are. He finishes his song with arms raised. Major Leslie RASC waits a while and says, “No, no, don’t
keep
them up there.”

A woeful series of acts follows. The blond guardsman who. recited Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’. For this Major Leslie also suggested the use of the arms, but this time they were raised alternately on ‘certain words’.

I wandered lonely as a cloud (
right arm up
)

That floats on high o’er vales and hills (
left arm up
)

When all at once I saw a crowd (
right leg up?
)

– and so on. Comes the night, and the hopefuls go through their paces. They get what we would call sympathetic applause, i.e. bugger all. We stand in the wings watching, and keeping an eye out for ‘Ow do lads, ee bai gum.’ The interval, and the judging goes on. Stan Bradbury ‘entertains’ at the piano. Why I don’t know. A very amiable man, well-loved in the music profession, but an entertainer, no. All the while he played, the audience thought he was the warm-up pianist for a forthcoming singer who never materialized. Now, a last-minute change! The Polish Ballet are playing up and are to go on
before
us; the girls are beautiful, the boys more so; it’s a stunning dance company with the full orchestra conducted by Raymond Agoult.

“And now,” it’s the announcer Philip Slessor announcing an announcement, “from the Central Pool of Artists, the Bill Hall —”

Before he could get the words out there was a roar from the crowd. We can do no wrong, a smash hit again. The encores keep Gracie Fields trapped in the wings. We take five curtain calls, and then the orchestra plays ‘Sally’. On come Gracie, and by the great wave of applause one realizes that none of them have ever heard her Royal Palace NAAFI Naples singing sessions. But disaster lurks for poor Gracie: Gunner Secombe is now poised on the spotlight. He has been told to put the Red Jelly in for when she sings ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. Secombe is myopic: he walks into walls, over cliffs and under streamrollers and in recent years crashed into walls in horse-drawn coaches. In the dark he juggles with the jellies; Miss Fields goes rapturously into ‘Red Sails’ only to turn green.

“You’re going mouldy, Gracie,” shouts a wag. The audience dissolves into tears. Gracie handles it well.

“Sum wun up there don’t like me,” she says. Secombe realizes the error and soon Miss Fields is a bright purple, yellow and then orange. Finally someone brings him down with a rugby tackle and before he can do any more damage, he’s carried out screaming, shaving and farting.

During our act, we have been spotted by an impresario in the Judges’ Box who sends us a note promising untold riches in the future.

The note that promised us work in England (original in the British Museum
)

After the show we are all presented to Miss Fields. “Ow do lads,” she says. “Ee, I could do with a nice cup o’ tea.” She says she “looved our act and would we like a nice cup o’ tea?”

Captain Reg O’List wants us to have dinner with him again. He treats Us to a horse-drawn — “Mean bugger won’t pay for a taxi,” says Hall — again it’s spaghetti and wine, and again he will sing ‘Begin the Beguine’. I can see by the look in Bill Hall’s eyes he fears Reg O’List could become the male Gracie Fields. As the evening goes on, he does, Hall is leaving. “We got to leave for Naples at nine, Reg.” Too late — Reg O’List has already become Gracie Fields and is singing ‘Begin the Beguine’.

ISCHIA

Ischia

March 1946. Our cleaning ladies consisted of pretty young Italian things, all on the lookout for potential husbands to take them to Inghilterra. Bornheim and I are pursued by two Marias. (All cleaners in twos are called Marias in Italy.) My Maria I used for laundry, sock repairs and groping.

We decided to take the girls to Ischia as a repayment for squeezing them. When we told them, they shrieked with excitement. No, they’d never been out of Napoli, was there somewhere else? They’d certainly never been to Ischia.

On the Sunday, they turned up carrying raffia baskets full of home-cooked Neapolitan goodies. The ferry was crammed, the noise of their chattering drowning out the engines. Forty minutes and we are there; I try my luck and take us to the Colonel Startling Grope Villa of yore.

Yes, the manservant remembers me of yore — Can we use the private beach? Er — yes. The ‘yes’ is good, the ‘er’ is worrying. We disport ourselves and are soon immersed in the sparkling waters. The girls are delirious. Maria I, who is mine, I had only seen in her scruffy working clothes, but now, in her black one-piece bathing costume she is very very dishy and ready to be squongled, and it can’t be long now. The girls open the ‘hamper’. In half an hour we put on a stone and sink like one. Oh, Neapolitan cooking! We must see the Grotto Azura, says a plying prying boatman. We argue the price and then he rows us to the enchanted hole in the cliff. We enter with our heads ducked and lo, a wonderous luminescent cavern, flickering with diaphanous sunshine on the cavern wall; by a trick of the light we appear to be floating on air. I dive over the side and give an underwater cabaret, in which I look as if I am suspended in air under the boat. It’s all wondrous, the girls squeal with delight that echoes round the cavern. Out again into the white sunlight and back to the beach. On dark winter nights I recall that day — the clock should have stopped there. Our ‘yes’ has run out and the ‘er’ I was worried about is operating. Er — would we leave now as the owner is returning from Naples where he has been selling packets of sawdust.

We caught the last ferry as twilight fell across the Bay of Naples; pimples of light are starting to appear on the shore. A thousand shouts as we draw to the quay, brown hands grasp the ropes and affix them to rusting bollards. We hire an ancient Fiat taxi that looks like a grave on wheels. It chugs and rattles its way up the slopes of the Vomero. “Qui, qui, ferma qui,” shout the girls. In the dark there’s a brief kissing. We are waving the girls goodbye, when Kerash!! from nowhere a drunk appears and punches through the taxi window.

“Attenzione,” shouts the driver. “Coltello.” (Look out he’s got a knife.) We leap out and set off hot foot. He is shouting something in Italian that sounds like ‘My mother keeps legless goats’ that can’t be right. Why are
we
running away from a man whose mother keeps legless goats? Cowards all!

I suddenly stop, turn, thrust my hand inside my battledress pocket and whip out an imaginary pistol.

“Attenzione!” I shout. “Pistole!” He stops in his tracks and runs away. He could have sung ‘Lae thar piss tub dawn bab’ but didn’t. Very good Milligan. The day ended with a pointed finger. It wasn’t the end of a perfect day, but it was an end. “Who the fuck was he?” said Bornheim, much much further down the hill.

Civilain Status

T
he Central Pool of Artists is changed to The Combined Services Entertainment. Why? I suppose it’s the result of a ‘meeting’. In its wake we, the Bill Hall Trio, are being offered officer status and wages if, when we are demobbed, we sign with the CSE for six months. Hedonists, we all say yes. Officer status? Cor Blimey! All the bloody months in the line and you become Lance-Bombardier. Play the guitar in perfect safety, you become an officer. If I learned the banjo and the tuba I could become a Field-Marshal!

I wrote home and told my delighted parents. Mother proudly informed the neighbours that her son was a ‘Banjo-playing Officer’.

Copy of letter asking us to stay on six month contract