Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [93]
“We better get something to eat,” said the soft voice of Bombardier Ken Carter.
Belvedere del Cimbrone
“Where?”
“Let’s go back to the Piazza,” I said. “There might be something there.”
“I don’t remember seeing anything there,” said Edgington.
“You must remember seeing something, Harry, if it’s only the floor. I mean we were only there half an hour ago.”
“Your power to bend words,” he said, “will one day end you in the nick, nuthouse or graveyard.”
We reached the Piazza as the twilight was touching the adjacent hills.
“You lads lookin’ fer sumfink?” A wavery female cockney voice! Standing by the gate of a whitewashed wall was a small, skinny lady of about fifty or a thousand.
“She’s speakin’ cockney,” whispered Edgington from the corner of his mouth.
“Perhaps she’s lost,” I said. “We’re lookin’ for mangiare,” and I automatically did the sign of eating.
“No need to make signs fer me, darlin’,” said the amazing cockney voice. “I lived in London forty years.”
With the Romans, I thought. She then told us the good news that was to lead to an unforgettable night.
“Come on in, we can fix you up wiv eggs and chips and some wine, that’ll do yer, won’t it?”, she said and gave that forced cockney laughter of embarrassment.
Soldier buying a dress in hopes of an early release, apparently to Arabia.
We followed her on to a terrace that had a sensational view down a precipitous mountain that concluded with the sea. In a small, plain, wine-coloured walled room, adorned with a few religious pictures and a mixture of stern-faced Neapolitan grandfathers, grandmothers and children in communion white, we sat around a central table with a tablecloth that looked suspiciously like a sheet. I hoped I wasn’t at the feet end. Chattering, she plonked down two large carafes of red wine. “There, that’ll keep yer goin’ till din-dins,” and disappeared into the back room where she reverted to broad Neapolitan and shouting. She was answered by a male voice that appeared to have sandpaper lining his throat, that or his appliance had slipped.
To Edgington’s joy, there was a piano against the wall. The first notes of ‘Tangerine’, and we all joined in, a memory of our North African Concert Party days. Outside, twilight was crepuscularly moving along the Amalfian coast. Ah ha, eggs and chips Italian-style, with spaghetti!
“Heavens alive!” exclaimed Edgington, a man brought up on roast beef and two. “Spaghetti with eggs?” he chortled, “that’s what Catholicism does for you.”
I observed the faces of my comrades, the same expression I had observed a thousand times; it is when for a moment conversation stills at the sight of the food, the communal spirit is temporarily forgotten, and each man is only aware of himself, his stomach, and the pleasant preparatory taste of salivary juices in his mouth. A half-smile was on the face of them all except Jam-Jar. His face took on the appearance of a Cougar about to kill.
“There yer are, me darlins,” said our little lady, balancing four plates along one arm.
There followed that urgent rattling of cutlery knives and forks foraging like hungry wolves among the repast. There’s the usual English insult to culinary art, snowstorms of salt and pepper. I saw her wince at the request for ‘Tomato Sauce’. Her husband appeared, a replica of Henry Armetta,* short, fat, greasy, amicable; he grinned and made the little nodding gesture of the head peculiar to Italians.
≡ Hollywood support star of the Thirties.
On reflection, it would look peculiar on anybody.
“Buona, eh?”
“Si, molto buona,” we chorused.
Pressing my linguistic abilities