Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [59]
Dawn Over Reigate and 40 Meadow Way
Father has left at some unearthly hour to work like a nigger. Mother tells me he had a good breakfast. “Porridge, it gives a good lining to your stomach,” eat it all up son, it will do you good. I bet you missed your mother’s cooking, didn’t you son. Now, have I any dirty washing? She’s doing a boil today. Yes. I proudly show her my collection of post-war underwear. “What are they son — floor cloths?” She boils them. Several disintegrate and float to the surface as froth, some survive but die later that night.
A lazy day, endless cups of tea, smoking. “You’ll ruin your health, son.” Fruit cake, the shits, and Primo Scala and his Accordion Band on Workers’ Playtime. How can people work with that noise? Twenty accordions playing those digital dysentery numbers with thousands of notes spewing out to show off their technique. Monte Ray sings in a strangled nasal castrati voice. The afternoon turns into evening.
I nip out to telephone Betty Cranley and her body. She’s booked a room at the Admiral Owen Inn in Sandwich as Mr and Mrs Cranley. Can she buy a cheap ring to make it look official? Why not? Would she like me to wear a top hat and hurl confetti in the receptionist’s face? Don’t be a silly sod. She says we can go for long walks. What is she talking about? I replace the melted phone and get dressed again.
“Is that you son?” Yes, it’s that me son. “Wipe your feet, it’s very muddy outside.” More tea, fruit cake and the shits. It’s dark now. My mother is saving electricity; she’s cooking in braille in a blacked-out kitchen. Footsteps on the path and Red Indian war dance stamping. It’s my father’s shaking-the-mud-off ritual.
“Is that you kid?” says Mother. She thinks he’s a goat. Dad comes in shagged out from working like a nigger. We’ll have to move nearer into London, the journey is killing him. How terrible, first his firm now the journey. When am I going back? He takes his shoes off his Fleet Street weary feet. His shoes are going home, this hole is letting the rain in, and this one lets it out again. He can’t understand it, they cost twelve shillings and they’re only thirty years old. I cheer him up, I have brought him a nice bottle of Tokay. He likes Tokay: it speaks of gypsies and caravans in the woods with leaping bonfires and bare-shouldered girls. Supper is boiled hake. He sips the Tokay appreciatively.
“Ah, a fine wine, made by bare-shouldered gypsy girls leaping over bonfires.”
When am I going back? I must leave them on the morrow, I’m to be married in Sandwich. What am I talking about? You be careful in Sandwich, they warn, it’ll ruin your health. Father must hear the nine o’clock noise. We all sit facing the fretwork front of the battery set. We twiddle (yes twiddle) the knobs and home in on Alvar Liddell. Coal production is up! Quick, open the champagne. Ernie Bevin has piles and is going in for the operation. There’s trouble in Palestine, there’s trouble in Indo China, there’s trouble in 40 Meadow Way, Reigate, the lights have fused. My father is in the broom cupboard. Who made these bloody silly fuses? Ah, he’s done it. He screams as 240 volts flow through him, through the house and onto his quarterly bill, and that is the end of the news.
I spend a few more days with them. Every night my Father returns from the Associated Press, looking more and more like a nigger. In the evenings we talk about the future. I say I don’t think there is one, this is really life after death. How can a nice Catholic boy say that? No, I must return to the Woolwich Arsenal dockyard and work hard and wait for promotion or death. I tell them that my workshop at Woolwich Arsenal is now a giant bomb crater. Quick, the nine o’clock news, hurry. Coal production is now going sideways. Ernie Bevin has had his operation and I’m going to sleep. “There’s a po by the bed, son.”
Saucy Sandwich
The train to Sandwich takes me through the Kent countryside. All is russet with pale gold sunshine glistening on autumn-damp trees; through the Kent orchards, the trees heavy with