Goodbye Soldier (26 page)

It was an evening I’d never forget. The first bonus was we had a giant full moon, a cool evening. We arrive to crowds already entering the seating area in front of the stage, which is built into a giant arch in the ruins. I even thought I heard nightingales. I’d never seen this opera before. It was such a spectacle! And a giant cast. I was pretty stunned when, in the Grand March, it seemed every film extra in Rome was on stage, including two elephants! There was a wonderful vibrant orchestra of about sixty. The principals were Maria Caniglla and Giuzzo Neri; it was
bel canto
singing, soaring in the Roman night with ecstatic applause after each favourite aria. I was completely entranced. This was better than Harry James, better than two eggs, sausage and chips at Reg’s Café. At the end I sat there stunned, what a production! Time and again I was moved to tears by the music, was it really written by a man called Joe Green? Amazing.

After the opera I had promised to take Toni and her family to dinner at an hotel they had recommended – Albergo Tenente, wow! As Secombe would say, “There’s posh for you.” It’s modern but wonderfully tasteful; everywhere, it’s white marble and gilt. The dining-rooms are on the sixth floor overlooking the Tiber, the ruined Roman Ponte Sublicio and the Tiberine Island. A fawning manager greets us and a fawning waiter attends our table, how I love it. The Fontanas aren’t a well-to-do family – the mother has to work – so this is a treat for them, I can tell it by the delighted expression on Signora Fontana’s face. Mind you, the expression on my face when I saw the bill was something else. I mean there’s a limit to everything, even 72,000 lire!

The head waiter renders us a list of this evening’s specialities; he delivers it all with flamboyant gestures, rather like an excerpt from Shakespeare. It’s all a waste of time, as none of us want any. He deflates visibly like an actor who’s been booed. He hands us to a second waiter who takes our order with a slightly crimped mouth that looks like a chicken’s bum under pressure. The ladies are all agog with the munificence of the surroundings.

“
Un bel posto
, Terr-ee,” says Signora Fontana, whose head is all but revolving.

“Did you know, Terr-ee, Mussolini come here to eat?” says Toni.

“So have I,” I said.

“Mussolini,” says Miss Fontana, “is not bad man, he stupid.”

He must have been to pay these prices.

We talk about the opera. I lament the fact we don’t have such a plethora of wonderful voices back home.

“But you hev Gracie Fields,” says Toni.

“Yes,” I say, “we have Gracie Fields,” and leave it at that.

The meal passes with me trying to interject into the conversation. I knew a few Italian words that would suffice: ‘
Avero
’ (is that true), ‘
la penna del mia zia e nel giardino
’ (the pen of my aunt is in the garden) or ‘
Mio cane ha mangato ilgatto
’ (my dog has eaten the cat) and ‘
nostra cameriere ha profumati ginnochi
’ (our waiter has perfumed knees) – all said much to the bafflement of Signora Fontana, but it has Toni laughing.

“My mother think you mad,” she says.

“I see, then I must tell you that
il papa non suona lafisarmonica bene
” (the Pope cannot play the accordion well).

At this Signora Fontana laughs out loud, then stops herself with a hand over her mouth.

The chicken’s-bum waiter brings the bill, face downwards on a silver tray (not him, the bill). I turn it over and fake a heart attack. “Call a doctor,” I say. “No no no, on second thoughts, call a financier.” After this clowning, I make big of paying the bill. How I loved those huge Italian bank notes. As they are carried away, I fake tears and sobbing.

We are all fairly merry with wine as we taxi back home. Lily, who has heard that I can croon, wants me to sing ‘
una canzone come la jizz
’. I’m well lubricated enough to go straight into ‘Boo boo boo the thrill is gone, the thrill is gone, I can see it in your eyes’. I couldn’t fail, I had three captive females and
I’d
paid for the dinner. Lily claps. “Bravo, Terr-ee,” she says. Good, a lone clap is better than a single herpe.

Arriving back home, Signora Fontana looks at her watch: ‘Mama mia’, look at the time, she has to get up early for work. So, with a chorus
oibuona nottes
we retire for the night.

Alas, we collide a little later when we all try to use the loo. Flushes and blushes. I lie in bed going over the evening – how nice this all was, I would certainly miss it.

What was this new terraced house my parents had moved into in delightful Deptford like? Did it have a coke boiler and baths every Friday night? Did my father still wear long underwear in one piece that he shed like a butterfly emerging? Could his socks still stand up on their own? With these fond memories, I fell asleep.

∗

A new dawn, a new day, the same old me. I awake to catch Toni emerging from the bath, wrapped in a towel. Temptation at this time of the morning: she looks glowing. I grab her and kiss her – holding her up so her feet leave the ground, only to drop her at the approach of Gioia who will
have
to be killed.

Toni has arranged for us to have our photo taken by ‘Very good photograph man, best in Rome’. Go on, say it, and the most expensive!! I remember the great days when my roll of money was 72,000 lire – now it’s down to 30,000, just a ghost of itself! The photographer’s trade name is Luxardo; his real name is II Conto Julio Di Sacco. He is of noble blood and six foot tall – so good-looking, it hurts. He speaks flawless English, has been to Caius College, Cambridge, wears a dazzling white shirt and trousers and a black silk neckerchief and is as queer as a coot.

“Good morning,” he says. “Let’s see, it’s,” he looks up his leather appointments book, “Mr and Mrs Fontana.” Wrong. Mr Milligan and Miss Fontana. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

From his posh front office, we enter his studio: very large, a mass of equipment and lights and a young boy. “This is Francesco, my assistant.” And queer as a coot. Would we like to sit on this couch? He stands behind a large wooden box camera, talks rapidly in Italian to the lad who is putting a plate in. The Count comes forward and arranges us with our heads together. He’s different, he
doesn’t
want us to say cheese, he doesn’t take pictures of those unending grinning idiots that plague the world of photography. “I want you both to look serious.” He pauses for a look through the lens. “Are you both in love?” Yes, I’m both in love. “Good, then you think that when I say ready.” He takes a giant stride ‘twixt us and the camera, very much like Jacques Tati. Finally, he settles. “Ready? In love, hold it.” Hold what? A light flashes. “Very good,” he says to himself. “Now I’m going to take you individually. Miss Fontana, then.” He giantstrides towards her and places her hand under her chin. “Like that, very good.” He giantstrides back, lights a cigarette, tosses his head back to eject the smoke and aims through the lens.

“Think nice things,” he says. The flash of light, then it’s my turn. Please, God, can he make me look like Robert Taylor. “No, don’t look at the camera, Mr Milligan, just to the right. Think nice things.” I think of my nice things – a flash and it’s all over. “They’ll be ready day after tomorrow.” With great courtesy, he bows us out.

Toni and I decide to walk for a while. We are on the Via Tritoni, right in the heart of the city – well, actually, more in the kidneys. Toni eulogizes about how handsome the Count was. “He very good-looking man.” Not quite, Toni, a very good-looking
it
. Am I sure? Positive. No! Yes!! We have a nice, long, lazy walk and eventually end up at the Fonte di Trevi, its gushing waters giving a scene of cool relief in the hot atmosphere of the city. “We must throw in money and make wish,” says Miss Fontana. I peel off a thousand lira note as though to throw in. “No, no,” she takes some small change from her handbag and gives me a coin. “We throw together.” She smiles. We watch our coins slither to the bottom. “Make wish now,” she says. What I wished for, I can’t remember. I wonder what, in those distant days, it was…I wonder, too, what Toni wished for and did it come true?…

It’s time for a coffee, etc. We find a small café, etc. and sit outside. It’s a delightful day; it seems that Rome has endless sunny days that pass by almost unnoticed, etc.

Here my diary suddenly stops. All it says is ‘Measured for a suit!’ I remember this was done at the prompting of Toni, who knows a ‘good, cheap tailor!’. He has a shop on the ground floor of the Teatro Marcello. Inside it’s small and dark,
he
is small and dark. He smiles, he has small dark teeth. All the time he nods his head as if the neck is loose. Oh, yes, he can have the suit ready in three days
if
‘we pay a small service charge. I choose a cloth but Toni doesn’t like it. Has she something against purple and yellow check? I’ll be the talk of Deptford. ‘There he goes,’ they’d say, or ‘Here he comes,’ depending on which direction I was going. No, no, no! She chooses a dark cloth, with a faint stripe.

“Theese more elegant, Terr-ee,” says the little devil. Of course, I say yes. If she asked me to wear a transparent loin cloth, gumboots and a revolving hat, I’d have agreed. Standing on a chair, he measures me. Inside leg, which side does the
signore
dress? Near the window, I told him. He takes my chest measurement twice. He doesn’t believe it the first time. Do I like padding? Oh, yes. Where? Everywhere. Do I like wide bottoms? On some women, yes, Boom Boom.

∗

So, dear reader, we come to my two blank days. However, on 23 September my diary continues. “Lazy day, went to Parco Botanico. Lunch in park. Carriage drive back home. Madam Butterfly in evening, awful singing. Toni tells me organized by black marketeers, claque in evidence.”

Yes,
Madam Butterfly
was at the Rome Royal Opera House. Toni has two free tickets that her mother had given to her by a customer at the CIT travel agency. What a treat to look forward to! But it was a night of suppressed hysterical laughter. The whole opera was financed and cast by black marketeers. I couldn’t believe it. When first I saw Madam Butterfly, she was
huge
, with a heaving bosom. I thought, out of this frame will come a most powerful voice. When she opened her mouth to sing, you could hardly hear anything. To accentuate the shortcoming, she overacted, throwing her arms in the air, clasping her hands together, falling on her knees with a groan, running across the stage with loud, thudding feet – all to thunderous applause from an obvious claque. Then we wait for Lieutenant Pinkerton: my God, he’s half her size! He can’t be more than five foot five inches and so thin that when he stood behind her, he vanished. He has a piercing tenor voice, high up in the nose, with a tremendous wobbly
vibrato
that fluctuates above and below the real note. He is obviously wearing lifts in his shoes that make him bend forward from the ankles as though walking in the teeth of a gale. If that isn’t all bad enough, he is wearing what must be the worst toupee I’ve seen. It appears to be nailed down, the front coming too far forward on the forehead with a slight curl all round where it joins his hair.

Trying to laugh silently, I’m almost doubled up in pain. All around me are Mafia-like creatures – one wrong move and I’ll be knifed. So be it, no comedy could exceed this. We notice that when Pinkerton tries for a high note, he shoots up on his toes, putting him at an even more alarming angle. When he and she embrace, she envelopes him completely, his little red face appearing above her massive arms as though he’s been decapitated. I’m carried on the tide of enthusiasm. When the claque jump up applauding, so do I. “
Bravo, encore!
” I shout. It was a night I can never forget.

At the little restaurant after the show, I keep breaking into fits of laughter as I recall it all. Toni is split down the middle, both halves being equal to the whole. She’s ashamed that something so bad should go on at the Royal Opera House. “
Disgrazia
,” she says, but continues to laugh through it.

I remember that, as we sat outside eating, for no reason it started to rain. We retreat inside while a waiter rescues our food. The waiter is amusing; he apologizes for the rain and says even though some has settled on the food, there’ll be no extra charge.

Seated inside, Toni suddenly says to me, “You know, in two day you leave me.”

My mood changed, was it that soon? I was so impervious to days that each one came as a shock. Why wasn’t time timeless?

“Toni,” I said, “I’ll come back as soon as I can and I’ll write as much as I can.”

That’s followed by us just looking at each other in silence.

“I miss you very much, Terr-ee.”

She looks so small and helpless;
I feel
so small and helpless.

“I tell you what, we have some champagne, yes?”

She pauses reflectively. “OK,” she says.

The restaurant hasn’t any champagne. “
Tedeschi hanno bevuto tulto
,” says the waiter. Would we like Asti Spumante? Yes, when in Rome.

When midnight strikes in some campanile, we toast each other. We’d done it so often before, but this time it’s a little more meaningful – our sand is running out. In the taxi back, I sit with my arm around her, her head on my shoulder (sounds like a transplant). I hum her favourite tune, ‘La Valzer di Candele’…We tiptoe into the apartment and I instinctively wait for my mother’s voice, “Where have you been at this time of night.” No, it’s Signora Fontana asking is that Toni. Yes, so goodnight.

∗

The day is suit-fitting day. When we arrive at the tailor’s, a man is leaving wearing a terrible suit that appears to have been made by a blind man. No, no, no, says the little tailor, he didn’t make that. It’s only his father-in-law visiting to collect the alimony. My suit is all ready on a hanger. Will I step into the cubicle and change? The suit is a great success; I can’t wait to get outside for a photograph.