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in clan kilt. He is the image of Jerry Collona.
    “I’m Gunner Milligan I —”
    He pounces in. “Ahhyes, you’ve come at an awkward time.”
    “I could come back…after the war.”
    No, follow him. Through an arched annexe into a sumptuous room, the beds are on a three-foot raised platform in the middle, surrounded by a Roman-style wooden railing in the St Andrew’s Cross design. “It’s how the Romans used to sleep, raised up,” he explains. “That’s my bed, use the mossy-net at night and take Mepacrin.” He is Corporal Tom Ross. “You can call me Tom, except near officers.” Right, he can call me Spike, except near railings. He is from the 51 st Highland Division. Had I heard of them? Yes, we called them the ‘Hydraulics’ because they would lift anything. He too was bomb-happy. “Alamein, it were tue much fer me.” I told him not to worry, it was too much for Rommel as well.
    I met the staff. The cook, Franco (all Italian cooks not called Maria are Francos in Italy), two serving girls, Rosa and Maria (all Marias not called Rosa are called Marias in Italy), girl secretary Bianca, Italian barman Carlo (all Italians not called Franco are Carlos except the Pope). The officer in charge is Lieutenant Oliver Smutts, bomb-happy, balding, with an Adam’s apple which looks like a nose further down; slim, as are his chances of promotion. He interviewed me. I was to be receptionist and wine waiter.
    SMUTTS:
    Do you know much about wine, Milligan?
    MILLIGAN:
    Yes sir, I get pissed every night.
     
    The club is open from midday till the wee hours. It closes when either the guests or the staff collapse. A ‘Gypsy’ band plays for dancing; the leader is Enrico Spoleto, who turns out to be the Town Major’s batman, Eric Collins. In his black trousers, white shirt and red bandanna, he looked as much like a gypsy as Mel Brooks looked like Tarzan.
     
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Lieutenant Oliver Smutts…
Ruler of a marbled drinking palace
Corporal Tom Ross
An untreated Scots Eunuch
Gunner Milligan
Buttons
Maria
Virgin in Waiting
Rosa
Virgin not waiting too long
Carlo
Barman/Mafia
Bianca
Hand maiden to Pasha Smutts
Franco
Cook and resident Sex Maniac
Various gardeners, scrubbers, dustmen.
    The job is bliss, except! Pasha Smutts is jealous. Bianca, his fancy, fancies Buttons. Was it my fault that I was lovely? Lots of fun and games with Maria and Rosa. Breakfast is in bed! Brought by Rosa or Maria. Maria made a point of whipping the bedclothes off to examine my condition. I never failed her. It was a good Rabelaisian start to the day.
    My duties are to make out the menus, check the wine stocks, and release anyone imprisoned in them. Apart from the gypsy orchestra, there’s still a lot of fiddling. Tom balances the books so well we all pocket five hundred lire a week. The evil cook will do anything for fags except his wife. Rosa lays the tables and Tom lays Rosa. I sit at the door and book the officers in. It was a paid membership club, with a tendency to not remembership to pay. Like Groucho Marx said: “Never lend people money, it gives ‘em amnesia…”

The Dancing Officers
    T he terrace is cleared for these gyrations. Most of the partners are WREN or ATS Officers and the occasional upper class Iti scrubber. Spoleto and his ‘Gypsies’ make woeful attempts to play ‘Moonlight Serenade’, ‘One o’clock Jump’, and ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. The trouble is the partially deaf Italian drummer of seventy who has no damper on his bass drum so that it booms round the room like a cannon; but we are grateful for it when Spoleto takes a vocal in an appalling nanny-goat voice:
    “There’ll be BOOM BOOM over the BOOM BOOM of Dover To BOOM BOOM just you wait and BOOM BOOM.”
    Thank God they never played the Warsaw Concerto.
     
    Dancing. There are none worse than those swaying pump-handled Hooray Henrys. I watched the agonized gyrations of the two dancers’ feet, neither pair knowing what instructions it was supposed to