Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [77]
Here I was awakening them, so that they would not be late on parade, and what do I get? But wait, what is Gunner White saying to me, his hands round my throat, “You cunt!…today’s SUNDAY…SUNDAY!”
The more religious had gone to mass at RHQ. I didn’t. I was a bad Catholic and I didn’t want to spoil my fine record. I wanted to be like my father. All his life he totally ignored his religion, but when he’s told he’s dying, suddenly! it’s Good Catholic Time! “Call a Priest,” he says. “No, wait, call a Bishop.”
In those moments before death he was re-baptised seven times, went to confession a dozen, and took communion six times. He used to say, “What’s the use of being a good Catholic for seventy years? All you need is one confession before you die and it makes up for all of it, and look at the time and money you’ve saved!”
The Sunday was all letter-writing, yarning, darning holes in clothes, reading, and fishing in the canal. I spent an hour feeding worms to the fish and gave it up. Gunner Miller of 18 Battery has a real line, and is catching Roach, Dab, etc…He gave me two. Ronnie May grilled them and I gave one to Edgington (who doesn’t remember the occasion), he complained bitterly, “It’s full of bloody bones.”
“Of course it is, everybody is, you’d fall down without ‘em.”
DECEMBER 20, 1943
“Looking forward to Christmas, Harry?”
Edgington looks up from his mess-tin. “I’m not sure, mate, in one way yes, in another no, the no part is spending it away from home. You can’t help feeling homesick, and it’s worse at Christmas.”
There is no place to be at Christmas except home. I thought of the Christmasses I remembered from boyhood days in Poona. I remember the little room I slept in at the back of the house in 5 Climo Road, the indescribable excitement of waking at four in the morning, with the world of adults all silent, finding the pillow-case full of boxes and toys, and the magic as you unwrapped each one…I remember waking up at the very moment my mother and grandmother were putting the pillow-case at the bottom of my bed, explaining how ‘Father Christmas had just gone’, and when I asked which way he went, they pointed at the window; as it was covered with chicken wire, I worked out that he was magic, had got through the holes and was now a jig-saw puzzle. All that and more was moving in the memory bank of my past, and I too knew that Christmas on a farm in Italy could never be the real thing. Ted Lawrence, the Don R, brings news of Kidgell; he’s in Naples at the REME Depot.
Driver Kidgell
“Lucky buggers, billeted in the middle of Naples for three bloody weeks.”
Edgington is reading a shirt. “Remember that girl in Bexhill with the hairy legs who played Chopin?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s all I ever think of, she and her hairy legs playing Chopin.”
“I wonder what happened to her?”
“I suppose she’s shaved her legs and they now play Rachmaninov.”
“I remember the time we were pulling out of Bexhill—”
“You pulled out in Bexhill? What was the poor girl’s name?”
He ignored me. “…we were pulling out, and we were detailed to clean up the officers’ billets———”
“Trevissick?”*
≡ Name of officers’ billet in Bexhill.
“Very!…we were just finishing off, when you spotted a crate of booze in the back of the garage. I remember one bottle was rum, and you and I started to sip it, remember?”
“Yes, if I remember, I sipped half the bottle and you the other, we carried the bottle through Mill Wood, getting more and more pissed, we finally got out the other side on the Ninfield Road, and you remembered this bird because you’d tried to have it away with her, but she wouldn’t have it because she was getting married.”
“I know, I told her I was trying to warm her up for the honeymoon…”
“Helpful old you. Anyways, we arrived at her place, it was about mid-day, she let us in and you insisted that she play some Chopin.”
“Yes,