June 1943, Egypt
Three things he hated about performing for the troops in Al-Jizah:
The baking heat. His body was perpetually covered in a slick of sweat but the air he breathed was hot and dry and his lips got crusty. And of course he was often covered in greasepaint, so add that to the mix.
The cheapening of himself as an artist. When he’d first joined ENSA he was doing tours of Shakespeare in Nice and Edinburgh, and how marvellous it was to return to Shakespeare, just like slipping your foot into an old slipper – silk-lined, of course. But now he was doing childish skits, his ‘act’ wedged in between old music-hall comedians and has-been singers – he’d reprised the role of Edward Crabbe for his latest sketch, enacting the last scene of the film in which the three reanimated corpses turn on their creator, slowly approaching him with their arms reaching out. In the film version it was Lillian White’s character, Beadie, who saved the day, pouring a vat of nitrogen oxide over them (which was ridiculous – why would an undertaker have nitrogen oxide lying about in his lab?), but here it was Mussolini and Hitler. They walked into the lab together, in full regalia, holding a map and bickering as if lost, and asked for directions to Britain. The corpses turned around and diverted their attack, surrounding the two characters and ripping them to pieces. Red paint and rubber limbs flying out of the screaming fray. A huge cheer from the troops. Cheap.
Missing the children. And worrying about them. But he was surrounded by other people who also missed and worried about their children, and this provided a drop of comfort.
He wasn’t drinking – there was nothing to drink – and he was usually hungry, subsisting on a diet of fatty grey mince and onion, boiled potatoes and stale bread. But he felt – well, like his old self. He’d withdrawn from people these last ten years or so like a sad old lizard. So many nights spent alone in the study, drinking whisky and going over resentments, re-imagining arguments, honing his parting shot – ‘You despise me? That surprises me – hatred requires emotion, which in turn requires a heart. You despise me? Clearly not as much as you despise vegetables and exercise. Cunt.’ He didn’t miss that study.
His best friend on the barracks was Archie Coogan, a gruff stand-up comic from Birmingham. The first time he saw Archie offstage he was sitting in the mess hall slurpily eating a bowl of vegetable stew. Archie was fat, really fat, wearing khaki shorts and a white paisley shirt with vast sweat patches under the arms, and he had pale ginger hair and a pointy ginger beard. His head was small and seemed to perch on top of his round body like a penguin’s, his beard the beak. His bare legs were hairless and pale and womanish, the skin soft-looking, creamy; marred only by mosquito bites.
Bart sat next to him and was surprised to find him effeminate and soft-spoken, his words fluttering out of his mouth like petals caught in a light breeze – onstage he was the very opposite: macho and brusque, a mouth full of artillery. He had a piece of faded newspaper in front of him on which he was writing down jokes and new ideas with a red crayon. They chatted about the other acts and Bart slipped in some Polari he’d learned from a queer navvy while in Nice (‘buvare’, ‘bona’ and ‘khazi’), and Archie did a little nod to acknowledge that he got the message.
Archie was currently fucking one of the caterers, Albert, an unsmiling Londoner who could usually be found on a stool crouched over a tin bucket, peeling potatoes. Archie called him ‘The Butcher’ because his cock was eight inches long and thick as a hat stand. He’d supposedly followed Archie into the lav one night, dropped his trousers and said, ‘Give us a wank, mate?’ Archie’s eyes glittered with mirth when he recalled this story. ‘How could a girl say no to that, eh? Coleridge himself could only ever dream of reaching such dizzy heights of romantic expression.’
Back home, Archie had led a double life. There was his manly stand-up persona, which brought him some minor celebrity in the halls and pubs of greater Birmingham, and then there was Ditzy Quimm, a bewigged, large-breasted drag queen in glittering gowns who cracked jokes and sang old favourites every Sunday night at the Tapette, an underground bar full of poofs, prostitutes and dope fiends. He recalled a night in the early 30s when a mob of evangelists had formed outside the bar, throwing eggs at the door (ah, the luxurious excesses of pre-rationing). ‘We locked the doors and we were looking out the windows, terrified,’ said Archie. ‘And do you know what I did? I put on my wig and make-up and I sneaked out of a side window when they were all occupied with a rousing hymn, and I joined them. I joined the mob. “Come out and face God, sodomites!” I mobbed myself!’ A giggle. ‘I laugh about it now, but honestly, I have never felt such abject horror towards the human race.’
It was Archie who introduced Bart to Burma Road – Be Undressed and Ready My Angel. Its real name was Bab El Louq and it was situated halfway between the back of the barracks and the spice bazaar. A long, desolate, sand-strewn street crawling with knobbly-spined cats, it was where the prostitutes waited for soldiers with a night off and some spare pennies to spend. At the far end was a side-street known by a select few as Buma Lane – Bums Up My Angel – and it was here that the homosexual soldiers came to relieve each other.
Bart was nervous the first time because he’d never done this sort of thing sober before. He waited by a bin, smoking (Archie went to the opposite side and immediately started proceedings with a black GI – one of his regulars) and was soon approached by a young British soldier who resembled Orson Welles. Silently they took turns sucking each other off. The man’s technique was terrible – he was all tooth and had an overly sensitive gag reflex. Bart closed his eyes and dangled his hands at his sides, a tap on the wall poking at the back of his knee. He heard Archie giggling girlishly with his GI, and a tethered goat softly bleating. Then approaching footsteps and the low growl of a zipper – a voyeur. Bart promptly came. And that was that.
They returned one night a week, always together. If they had a few hours to spare in the day they went to the large bazaar three miles away – Archie would attempt to walk it, but invariably ended up paying for a cart ride because the skin between his upper thighs chafed in the heat. They wrote sketches and songs together, Bart beginning to embrace the silly lowbrow humour because Archie made it fun. Archie made everything fun – well, except for that one night when he brought a bottle of some horrid spirit back from the market and they stayed up drinking in Archie’s room, and Archie got so drunk he started crying and admitted to Bart that he’d been raped by his uncle as a boy. Bart had held him tight, close to tears himself, and waited until he passed out. He took off his shoes and socks, secured the mosquito net around his bed and watched him sleep. Could I love him? he thought. Yes, easily. But could I fuck him? No. If he were thinner? Still, no. But the next morning over their breakfast, he reached out and squeezed Archie’s hand and said, ‘I’m not very good at being sincere and saying heartfelt things, but I want you to know that – well, I suppose what I’m trying to say is … what am I trying to say?’ Archie waited, his eyes bloodshot. ‘Look, it’s like this,’ he continued, ‘if we get bombed in this hellhole and die horribly, I’m glad it’ll be with you. I want us to still be friends when we’re old men. I want us to be seventy years old and still giving blowjobs to strangers in close proximity of one another.’
Archie smiled, pursing his face in that way Bart’s mother did when she was especially touched. ‘I feel exactly the same way, Crabbecake.’