Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [24]
A Red Beard and a Beret
By coincidence a real Royal Academician has joined our happy band. George Lambourne, one of Augustus John’s many sons, and the image of him. He brings his talents and a batch of Welfare painters to ‘tart up’ our drab interiors.
I met him when I attended one of his lectures. He was too good to miss. I made a point of taking him to dinner at Aldo’s Cafe. Talk was of painting. So, I’m doing murals. Did I go to art school? He is a bit puzzled by my scatty way of jumping from one subject to another like Queen Elizabeth the First, but I must have made an impression. Bear witness to mention in his diary.
I remember George pouring me a glass of red wine, and feeling the glow of his personality. A man of depth, character, talent and brains. Who were his favourite painters? He reels off a mixture — Giotto, Rubens, Boudin, Van Gogh. What about me?
“What do you like drawing, Spike?”
I told him. “Pay.”
Talking about Turner’s sunsets: “You never see a sunset like that,” I said. “No,” said George, “but don’t you wish you did!”
George died a few years ago. The world is a colder place.
The Murals
I’m there on the plank drawing enlarged fish, octopus, squid, dolphins and crabs; thank God I’ve never had them as bad. Maria drops in to see how I’m faring; there’s a bit of flirting; she brings me figs, oranges, grapes. I ask her if she has a relative in Pompeii. We are repeatedly interrupted by the croaking voice of her mother — “MARIAAAAAAAAA DOVE VI” — accompanied by sudden rushes into the room. Suspicious, yet disappointed. One arrives at the conclusion that the moment an Italian girl isn’t visible to her parents she’s screwing.
Their farm was a tumbledown affair, and the farm dog, Neroni, a mongrel, was a sad sight, tethered on a piece of rope that only allowed him three paces, nothing more or less than a hairy burglar alarm. The forecourt was a mess of stabling, two white longhorn oxen, a few bundles of silage, scattered farm tools and a wooden plough (in 1944!), a few chickens and goats, the latter given to the desertification of Italy. Poor Neroni, whenever I approached he would snarl and bark like crazy, but when close to, he cowered and whimpered. I got him a longer piece of rope. I stroked him, something no one had ever done before. He licked my face. I brought him some food which he wolfed down. I often think of him. Those days were among the best I’d ever have. At morning I’d breakfast and then make my way to the farm down a dusty lane. The landscape was not unlike Aries at the time of Van Gogh. I’d work through the mornings. I brought the mother some tea, sugar and tins of bully beef. She wept and kissed my hand. Never mind that, what about a screw with Maria!
By the first week in October I had completed the murals at the Aquarium Club. I arranged to finish mid-morning so I could sneak the rest of the day off. I pack up my pots of paint, wash out the brushes. Tomorrow I will steal another day off when I come to collect them. Goodbye Maria, Momma and Neroni. I walk back by the dusty road and pass a goat flock. A large she-goat is about to deliver. The goat herder, a boy of fourteen, is stroking her and saying “Piano, piano.” Why did a goat need a piano at this particular time? Finally the little hooves start to protrude. The boy, with consummate skill, takes the heels and pulls the kid clear, then repeats it on the twin, alley opp! The little kids, shiny and shivery, lie still as their mother licks them.