Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [56]
ME: Beryl, did I see you when I came on leave?
BERYL: Yes.
ME: Did I come and stay at your place?
BERYL: Yes.
ME: Oh. Er, what did we do?
BERYL: You came and stayed with me and my mum and dad at Anerley.
ME: What did we do?
BERYL: (laughing) Don’t you remember?
ME: No my mind’s a blank.
BERYL: Well you stayed with us, and we sort of went various places.
ME: Where?
BERYL: Well, I was singing at the Ballroom in Anerley and you came and saw me.
ME: Did we go up to London?
BERYL: Yes, you took me to the pictures in Leicester Square.
ME: Did I take you anywhere to eat?
BERYL: Yes, we went to the Corner House.
ME: How long did I stay with you?
BERYL: About a week or ten days.
ME: Did I tell you I was coming on leave?
BERYL: No you devil, you never told anybody when you were arriving or leaving. The day you arrived I was with my dad, you know I was a bit of a tomboy, well, I was in the garage helping dad under a car. I was covered in grease, I looked terrible.
ME: Nonsense, you are a very pretty girl.
BERYL: No I’m not.
ME: No, no, you weren’t pretty. You were better, you were different. You always reminded me of the girls in Walt Disney full-length cartoons. BERYL: I remember you took me to see a bloke in Streatham.
ME: That was Jack Blanks…he was a drummer.
BERYL: It was a road off Streatham High Street.
ME: Yes, that was Jack Blanks, he was a drummer…I remember I went to a dance where he was playing. I know someone was with me. Was it you?
BERYL: It could have been. I remember you went to Chappell’s.
ME: Great, yes, I went to buy a trumpet.
BERYL: Yes, you were playing this trumpet in the shop and the manager asked you if you would go down stairs and try it.
ME: Yes, I was buying one for the band. I also bought some mutes and an aluminium hat mute. BERYL: YOU went downstairs and you went on playing the trumpet and the manager came down again and asked if you could put a mute in as you were deafening the customers.
ME: What else?
BERYL: We went for a picnic. I had a gang of friends. You remember? Remember Curly, my sister?
ME: Yes, she was very cockney.
BERYL: That’s right. She was there and my friend Irene. We went by bus and you hung a beer bottle out of the window on a string. You had the conductor in fits of laughter.
ME: What kind of person was I? I can’t remember.
BERYL: You were a very nice young man, you were always smiling, and you always wanted to do something different from anybody else.
I daren’t ask her if I’d showed her my post-war reserve underwear. As Beryl spoke, it all came back. I remember the Corner House if only for the three-string orchestra, still lost in the 1900s, ploughing into Fritz Kreisler’s repertoire while I ate scrambled egg on toast. Beryl didn’t know what terrible danger she was in. We sat at night and listened to Harry Parry and the Radio Rhythm Club with Benny Lee. I also remember now that her mother made sensational roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for a Sunday lunch. I now know that I was, in my mind, living a dream life. I was floating on other people’s emotions, and only concerned with my own which were very childlike, naïve, and basically, deep down, there was a yearning for recognition. Recognition of what is not clear, but I know there was some goal in my life to be fulfilled. Sometimes I thought it might be as a painter, but mostly it was as a musician, maybe as a composer. None of these materialized, except in a minor capacity.
Beryl and I also made a flying visit to see my parents. She says my father answered the door and said “What do you want?”
I said, “Don’t you remember me? I’m your son.”
“Ah yes.” He called, “Kiddie,” (my mother) “come and see who it is.”
My mother came out, drying her hands and said, “Oh son, I had a premonition you were coming, I’ve just baked a nice ginger cake.”
I didn’t stay that night. Having found out where they lived and seen that they recognized me as their son and a ginger-cake eater, I returned for the last but