by John Harris
‘Who is it?’
‘Landon. X-X-ray. Sergeant Purdy promised me a tin of peanut butter.’
With an endurance in the region of twelve hours, the Catalinas carried rations and it was sometimes possible to scrounge a tin of something to supplement the wretched food in the cookhouse. With Freetown the only watering place on the West Coast of Africa for the Middle East convoys from England, the Germans had thrown round it a ring of U-boats, and convoys carried only arms and troops and little for the men who guarded the route. Most of them were sick to God’s green death of dehydrated vegetables and the canned stew they all knew as dog’s vomit, but because of the absence of civilization, there was no hope of supplementing them. So that, with every meal the same, and not much of any of them, and bread – so full of weevils it resembled currant bread, when it wasn’t a biscuit – down to two slices a day, devious means had been devised by a few of the old hands to attract the attention of the cookhouse staff while an extra slice was stolen for consumption last thing at night with aircrew margarine or peanut butter from men like Purdy, who was a New Zealander and received it in parcels from home.
At Jum there was a ten-foot difference between normal high tide and normal low tide and a catamaran, built of steel drums and planks and surrounded by old motor tyres, rode up and down on two heavy wire ropes secured to the piles which supported the pierhead. To reach it the Catalina crew struggled down the wide wooden rungs of an improvised ladder and began to toss their belongings into the twenty-four-foot motor dinghy which was to carry them to their aircraft. Two of the marine section duty crew, sailors despite their RAF ranks, climbed in with them and, using an Aldis signalling lamp to show them the way, headed down the dark creek to where the aircraft were moored.
Edging alongside one of the Catalinas, moving warily to avoid damaging the Perspex gun blisters which stuck out on either side of the fuselage, the motor dinghy discharged its cargo of aircrew. As the last item of equipment was handed across the gap, there were a few light-hearted comments from both sides on the joys of night take-offs. Certainly, there wasn’t a lot to help. Downstream, three lights – bulbs attached to masts erected in dumb dinghies and powered with motor car batteries – glowed dimly in the darkness to make a flarepath.
In the cinema the concert was just beginning to warm up. The comedian could run rings round his Jum counterpart but he was not above using what local talent there was and a professional pianist, who worked a teleprinter at headquarters, had played a selection of the better known Chopin melodies through which everyone had sat in respectful silence, and a sketch was now just finishing. A man dressed as a nurse was having ‘her’ hand read by the comedian as she waited for her ‘boyfriend’ to turn up.
‘Here’s a bit of luck for you,’ the comedian was saying, ‘I can see him. He’s on his way now. He’s just got off at the railway station at Hawkinge Town. He’s staggering a bit. I think he’s drunk. He’s gone in for a beer. No, he’s come out again. They don’t give credit. He’s in the camp. He’s coming into this hall. He’s at the back! He’s coming on the stage!’
There was a commotion by the door at the appearance of a minute airman with shorts down to his calves and the biggest topee in the world covering his eyes. As the audience dissolved into laughter and the curtains came to, the comedian swept everybody away and began to introduce a stout grey-haired man who, judging by his moist features, was suffering a little from the heat. He was long past youth and everybody assumed he was just another eager baritone type who was going to jolly them along with a few rousing songs about the road to Mandalay and Old Father Thames rolling along.
‘Ettore Mori-Moncrieff!’
Only a few of the more discerning knew him, but among the ripple of polite applause came one enthusiastic rattle of clapping that sounded like a machine gun and heads turned to where a thickset plump youngster stood up, his eyes shining, his hands going like wasps’ wings. Leading Aircraftman Kneller, of the mooring party, the men who laid and maintained the buoys for the boats and aircraft, was one of the few men at Jum who had ever heard Ettore Mori-Moncrieff in action.
His neighbours pushed him down, the pianist tinkled a few notes and the man on stage began to sing. It startled everybody but Kneller and a few others, because the voice that emerged from the bulky body was pure gold.
‘Sang at La Scala.’ Kneller leaned over to Corporal Feverel alongside him. ‘Appeared with Flagstad and Schwartzkopf.’
Corporal Feverel, his immediate superior in the mooring party, was not visibly impressed. He was a short fair young man who looked even shorter because of the width of his shoulders and the sturdy strength of his body.
‘Heard him before?’ he asked.
‘Covent Garden. Used to buy tickets for the gods.’
Feverel smiled. Kneller was something of a phenomenon in that he was one of the few men of the hundreds in the camp who was not lean and emaciated. ‘Perhaps he’ll ask you to sing with him,’ he said.
Kneller grinned in embarrassment. He had a splendid voice and from time to time it could be heard floating across the water as he chased round the buoys in one of the motor dinghies. RAF, Jum, was really rather proud of him and prophesied a great future for him after the war, and when he was dragged on to the stage in the occasional camp concert, he always appeared with a great show of reluctance, but usually had to be almost pushed off.
Mori-Moncrieff had worked his way by this time through ‘Questa o Quella’ and ‘La Donna è Mobile’ from Rigoletto. He had gone for melodies which anybody could understand and most people knew, and, faced with undoubted talent, the audience responded enthusiastically.
He acknowledged the cheers and began to speak.
‘I am told that here in Jum,’ he said, ‘you have an enthusiast who sings opera whenever he is asked and sometimes even when he isn’t.’
There was a shout of laughter and Feverel nudged Kneller.
‘I’m also told that it is sometimes hard to stop him.’
‘Good old Nellie!’ A few yells started. ‘Sing us “Your Little Frozen Mitt!”’
Kneller was as pink in the face as a turkey cock, but Mori-Moncrieff was beckoning him to the stage. Pushed up by friends, Kneller stood alongside him, beaming.
‘You can sing “Your Little Frozen Mitt”?’ Mori-Moncrieff asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then, let us hear it.’
Kneller’s ‘Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen’ had always been popular, even with those whose tastes ran to ‘The Isle of Capri’ and ‘Down Mexico Way’ and after one false start and a lot of coughing, he gave it all he’d got. The audience loved it.
‘Good old Nellie!’
As Kneller stood beaming, Mori-Moncrieff touched his arm. He had expected an enthusiastic amateur but had got a voice of some quality. ‘I think the time has come to sing together,’ he suggested quietly. ‘I doubt if we shall be perfect without rehearsing or that the accompaniment will be the same as at La Scala – but we must do our best, no? You lead, I’ll follow.’
Kneller nodded speechlessly.
‘You know “Donna Non Vide Mai” from Manon Lescaut?’
Kneller nodded again.
‘Then let us begin.’
There was little clapping when they finished because for the most part it had been above the heads of the audience and they were silent out of respect rather than dislike.
And now, what about “The Flower Song” from Carmen? You know it?’
‘I used to sing Carmen with a girlfriend I had. She was in the local operatic society. She preferred “The Desert Song”.’
‘The Flower Song’ gave place to ‘The Toreador’s Song’, then they came down to the level of the audience with ‘Come Back To Sorrento’, ‘Santa Lucia’ and ‘The Donkey Serenade’.
This time the audience went wild and, instead of allowing Kneller to go back to his place halfway down the hall, Mori-Moncrieff beckoned him backstage.
‘What is your name?’ he asked, turnin
g to face him in the shadows as the comedian warmed up for another sketch.
‘Philip Kneller.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty.’
‘You know much opera?’
‘I know all the arias. My mother played the piano for us on Sundays. Her favourite song book was Gems From The Operas.’
‘Have you studied music?’
‘A bit,’ Kneller said. ‘But not much. My parents died in a motor accident when I was sixteen. I never sang in public till I joined the RAF.’
‘You have an ear for music, Philip Kneller. And quite a voice. Did you know?’
Kneller looked at the ageing singer, with his greying hair, pouchy cheeks and the bags under his eyes. ‘I have?’
‘I was once a great singer. I have sung at La Scala and Covent Garden. In Paris and New York. I know what makes a great singer. I think you could be one.’ The old man paused. ‘If that is what you want, of course. Because to be a great singer you have to wish to.’
‘I do wish to,’ Kneller said fervently. ‘I always did. I even tried to learn German and Italian so I could sing the words. I just never had the money for lessons.’
Mori-Moncrieff smiled. ‘You have many faults, of course. But these are the faults of someone who hasn’t been taught. You should go to the best teacher there is. Anything less could ruin your voice. Then you could be that rarest of all excitements – a new English tenor. Many Italian opera houses would be glad to have a lyrical tenor of your calibre.’
Kneller blinked. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I do. My mother was Italian…’
‘Christina Mori, the contralto.’
‘I see you’ve heard of her. Well, Italians know these things. I no longer sing professionally, of course. I teach. And I am here because I felt I had to do something to help. Servicemen are kind to me. They forget I’m growing old and applaud only my voice and the fact that I’ve bothered to do something for them. Now I would like to do something for you. How much longer will you be in this corner of Africa?’
‘Another two or three months.’
‘When you come home, get in touch with me, Philip Kneller.’ Mori-Moncrieff scribbled an address on a sheet of paper. ‘You need to learn how to breathe. With your chest. Place your hand on your stomach and feel it move. Study it. Watch it. I think it need not be long before you could sing with a company like the Carl Rosa. After that, who knows? Perhaps Covent Garden.’
Kneller was speechless.
‘I could get you accepted into the chorus. I know the right people. Then, if you’re lucky, someone with the impeccable ear of Sir Thomas Beecham could notice you. Vocal training can be sponsored if the talent, dedication and the voice are there. Would you be willing to work?
‘Two years? Four years?’ Mori-Moncrieff handed over the address. ‘When you come home, come and see me. I think you’re far too good to waste.’
As the old singer moved away, Kneller found a hand on his arm and saw the comedian standing by him. His sketch was proceeding at the moment without him and, gesturing with his thumb, he drew Kneller aside, his head still cocked for his cue to return to the stage. ‘Ever thought of joining a concert party?’ he asked.
Kneller looked puzzled and he explained. ‘I’ve been told to collect twenty-four servicemen. We’re going to start a big group in India and we need a good lead singer. Operetta’s all right. Needn’t be “Roll Out The Barrel”, but not opera. Old Hector Moncrieff, bless his cotton socks, is a bit behind the times. The boys don’t want that sort of stuff.’
‘They seemed to, tonight,’ Kneller said, faintly indignant.
The comedian ignored the protest. ‘How about it? Plenty of travel. Better conditions.’ The cue he was waiting for came and he touched Kneller’s arm. ‘We’ll be here until tomorrow. Leave a message at the officers’ mess.’
As he vanished, bursting back on to the stage with, ‘What the hell’s going on here? That’s my wife you’re with!’ Kneller stood in silence, thinking, unaware of the backchat going on in front of the lights.
He couldn’t explain what he felt and didn’t really want to. He’d known long since that if he tried he could get himself a place in one of the many concert parties that were going round the Middle East and India but, through some contrary whim, he had wanted to be in the war properly, and had even offered himself for aircrew. Only colour blindness had landed him in what he considered the next best thing – air/sea rescue and marine craft work – and the same contrary whim which prevented him from using his voice to get himself a cushy job had pushed him into the department which in Jum undoubtedly had the hardest job of the lot – the mooring party.
‘I’ll not bother,’ he said aloud.
Two
As Kneller slipped back into his place alongside Feverel, his face wore the look of someone who had seen God.
‘He told me I could sing,’ he said.
‘You can,’ Feverel agreed.
‘He also said he could get me accepted into the chorus at Covent Garden.’
Feverel looked at him, amused. ‘Then why the hell are you looking as if you’ve been struck by lightning?’ he asked.
As they whispered, above the laughter and the music from the stage came the intrusive sound of an aeroplane engine. It started, low, metallic and harsh, from the water a quarter of a mile away, and Wing Commander James Molyneux, to whose squadron the aircraft belonged, sat still and quiet, trying to listen. The rest of the audience heard the sound, too, and cocked an ear. Unaware of what was going on, the people on the stage went on with their patter. They didn’t know what it meant. To them it was just the sound of an aeroplane engine. To everybody else in the hall it was more than that. To them it was the sound of someone laying his neck on the block.
The river Rokel or Sierra Leone river, the old route of the slavers and the breeding ground for the fevers that ran through the coast’s grim history, started in high land up-country and coiled down to a wide delta that was a maze of tufted islands where ancient cannon rusted in decaying fortresses. Its tributary, the Bunce, running south from the delta under the mountains of the Freetown peninsula, became at the end of Jum creek a vast inland lagoon nearly five miles long and over a mile wide.
To the west, beyond the mountains, there was a flicker of purple lightning in the sky and the fitter of the seaplane tender moving slowly through the water, just ahead of where Catalina X-X-ray lay at her buoy, noticed it with pleasure. Lightning meant the rainy season was approaching and after months of unrelenting sunshine, the prospect of grey skies and cooler weather appealed. At the wheel, Corporal Harry Bates had other views. After one rainy season and two doses of malaria, he had hoped to be away from Sierra Leone before the next arrived.
One of the Catalina’s crew was standing in the hatch in the bow, wrestling with the slip rope that secured the wire grommet over the metal bitts on the aircraft’s nose. The grommet was attached to a wire strop shackled to a red rubber Short aircraft buoy floating just ahead. As the engines started, he cast off and the machine drifted backwards, then began to move forward from among the moored Catalinas and Sunderlands, the pilot working the throttles to give the machine way. In the distance, it was just possible to pick up the glow of light from Freetown harbour.
The big Catalina was moving up the lagoon now, Corporal Bates pleased because he’d scrounged the promised tin of peanut butter from Purdy, the flight engineer. Reaching the end of the lagoon, the Catalina swung again, its engines idling, and the seaplane tender circled slowly, ready to slip in alongside and behind on the take-off run.
Resting over the paddle of a native canoe, Leading Aircraftman Alec Donnelly watched the manoeuvring.
Ginger Donnelly was one on his own. The son of ne’er-do-well parents who had neglected not only his health, his food and his welfare but also his morals, at the age of seventeen he had been so regularly in trouble that, prompted by the police sergeant of his native village who was anxious to see the back of him, th
e magistrates had given him the alternative of a punishment of their choice or joining one of the services. Ginger had opted for the RAF, and had joined the marine section on the assumption that it was impossible to put a fence round a stretch of water.
Ginger’s problems arose not so much because he was dishonest but because he liked women too much. Despite a shock of pale ginger hair, yellow eyes, a face like a potato and a sunburst of freckles that spread across his nose and cheeks like a rash, he had never in his life had any difficulty getting a girl; and, posted to Stranraer seaplane base, he had immediately acquired a dinghy and a woman in Cairnryan. At Jum it had taken him just a fortnight from the date of his arrival to find a fisherman to sell him a canoe and a willing woman at Makinkundi at the head of the lagoon.
By this time, with long service stripes halfway up the sleeve of his best blue, he had been in the marine section for ever, could claim to have worked alongside T E Shaw, the great Lawrence of Arabia, who had been among those instrumental in starting it, and had even gone down in marine section legend as the man who had told his officer while underneath a pinnace with a paintbrush and a pot of anti-fouling that he was ‘a fucking deckhand not a fucking decorator’. When the Duchess of Atholl, carrying Ginger and many others to West Africa, had been torpedoed, wearing the first mate’s uniform jacket for warmth he had taken command of one of the lifeboats and when the submarine had surfaced and demanded, ‘What ship?’ had replied, ‘Duchess of Arseholes. Fuck off, you Nazi bastard!’ The navy had been full of praise for his skill when the survivors had been picked up and had liberally entertained the blank-faced Ginger, still wearing the mate’s jacket, on gin in the destroyer’s wardroom – until they had discovered he was a mere leading aircraftman and not a Merchant Navy officer, at which point he had been hurriedly returned to his friends.