by Simon Raven
‘You’ll see,’ said Geoffrey; ‘if the thing goes right, you’ll see what I mean later. Meanwhile, I want you to produce it.’
So I said I hadn’t the first idea how to begin, and he said not to worry, he’d be writing the script himself and masterminding the whole affair, but he wanted me as front man.
‘You’re younger,’ he said; ‘they’ll like it better if you seem to be running it. And your first job is the casting – or rather going round to tell ’em all what parts they’re playing. I’ve got the list here.’
The cast list had no surprises about it, just the usual kind of jokes. Geoffrey himself was going to be Baron Stonybroke and the two beefiest Sergeants were going to be the ugly sisters. One of the Company buglers – a jolly, rather spotty lad on loan from the Band – was going to be Buttons. The Sergeant-Major was down as Dandini with the Senior Lieutenant as the Prince. The Company slag was to play the Bad Fairy…and so on and so forth. I myself was billed as Cinderella, which I didn’t much fancy at first, but as Geoffrey said, somebody had to do it.
When I went round with the cast list, no one was very interested, but they all agreed ‘to give it a go’, it would make things a lot more like Christmas.
‘How are we going to manage about your pumpkin turning into a coach?’ said the Colour Sergeant (a knock-kneed beanpole who’d been cast as the Good Fairy).
‘We’ll discuss all that,’ I said, ‘when we have the first read through the script.’
‘Can I see a copy now, sir?’
‘No,’ I said, acting on Geoffrey’s instructions; ‘they’re not ready yet.’
I hadn’t seen a copy myself, as it happened, and indeed Geoffrey wouldn’t let anybody get near one until a few minutes before the read-through, when he handed me a pile to dish out.
‘Tell ’em, if they get any ideas of their own we’ll try to fit ’em in,’ Geoffrey said.
Then off we went to the read-through in the NAAFI tent, before I’d even had time to glance at what Geoffrey had written, so that what was in those scripts was as big a surprise to me, when we all got started, as it was to everybody else. Mind you, I’d expected a few filthy jokes, and even a bit of camp, because pantomime carries a traditional licence for transvestite humour; but I hadn’t at all expected the startling mixture of simple soldiers’ bawdry and polymath eroticism which Geoffrey had concocted – and for which, of course, everyone else thought I was responsible, since I was supposed to be getting the thing up. They all began giving me most peculiar looks before we were past the first page of Scene I.
This features Baron Stonybroke working on his whacky accounts and explaining to the audience that if he didn’t get one of his daughters off with a rich man pretty damn quick he’d be done for. Nothing out of the way in that. But he then went into a grotesque song and mime routine, from which it emerged that the two older sisters bribed spotty Buttons threepence a time to amuse them with his tongue in the woodshed, and that when this wasn’t happening they conducted an incestuous sapphic relationship, using a vegetable marrow as a two-way dildo. All this has spoiled them for the marriage market, because
Elsie’s quim is now so wide
You can drive a truck inside
(a typical example of the element of straight obscenity)
And Buttons’ fertile tongue,
Roving round her arcana
Has made Doris over-hung
With a clitoral banana
(a fair instance of Geoffrey’s more elaborate notions).
This, the Baron goes on, means that only Cinderella is left to save the old home by a wealthy marriage, but the trouble is that Cinders (or Fingers) is interested only in herself:
Oh Fingerella,
She cooks her own paella,
Won’t give the boys a sniff of it,
A teeny little whiff of it,
Oh, isn’t she cruel-la?
So what, the Baron concludes, is to be done?
Enter now, Cinderella, who goes straight into the following ditty:
Who wants cocks?
They give you the pox.
They put you in the club.
Much better have a nice safe rub
With your fingers
That lingers…
Oh frotting
It’s topping,
Oh frigging
It’s for digging,
Oh wanking
It’s so spanking,
You never want to stop.
But if you need a little variation,
Here’s a tip or two for modish masturbation:
A garden hose,
The parson’s nose,
The gear of a car;
A spoon or a fork
Or a burgundy cork
Will keep you quite happy
For hour after hour.
So…
Who wants pricks?
They put you in a fix,
Give you far fewer kicks
Than a nice long nail
Or a cricket bail…
Et cetera, et cetera [Fingel said] and so the caper goes on.
The basic theme is the frantic efforts of the Baron and others to convert Fingerella from self-abuse to almost any other form of sexual activity, in the hope of making her some sort of candidate for marriage with the Prince. He too has his peculiarities, one of which is an obsession with anuses; and when the Baron discovers this (in the Gents at the Ball) he hits on the scheme of getting Buttons to tickle Fingers’ behind while she’s busy in front, thus inducing in her a new taste which goes far to accommodate those of the Prince and brings the piece to a happy ending. There are a number of sub-plots…such as the stratagems used to steal away the ugly sisters’ vegetable marrow from the commode in which they keep it so that the Good Fairy can turn it into a coach. There is also much play with the Prince’s embarrassment, while he is disguised as Dandini, at being presented with a consignment, intended for the latter, of dirty socks from the barracks.
And so, old bean [Fingel said], here was this outrageous script, and here was a tentful of soldiers who were reading it aloud and for the first time. As I’ve told you already, I was on the receiving end of some pretty odd looks from the very beginning, and by the time the ugly sisters arrived at the Ball singing,
Ta-ra-da-bum-de-a,
Who’ll lick our labi-a?
the men were positively goggling at me. I was getting very jittery, I can tell you. Had Geoffrey gone too far? Because you know how it is with soldiers: on the face of it nothing’s too rude for them, but every now and then, for no very clear reason, they’ll have a sudden fit of lower-class prudery and turn as prim as nuns. You can never be sure what may set it off – probably something which you and I would find absolutely innocuous and something a great deal less disgusting than what they’ve been laughing at two minutes before. So it seemed to me that at any moment somebody was bound to be offended by something in Geoffrey’s highly catholic repertoire – and then watch out for trouble.
But none came. There was a lot of bungling and hesitation, to be sure, but this was due to lack of practice at reading aloud. Nobody dried up in protest or disapproval. Although some of the cast were slow to grasp the more abstruse references, they were not at all put out when they grasped them. The truth of the matter, as I realised a little later and as Geoffrey had known at the outset, was that after what seemed an age in the middle of nowhere they were ready to accept and to welcome anything which promised a change; and that furthermore, any moral scruples which they might have had were lulled by a sense that they were now totally cut off, that they were somehow beyond space and beyond time, in a sort of no man’s land where nothing really counted, where anything could be done or said with absolute impunity. For weeks this feeling of unreality and irresponsibility had been stealing up on them; and now here at last was this pantomime, written by one of their officers (me, as they imagined) and evidently countenanced by their Company Commander, to confirm them in their instinct. The looks which I had been getting
were not of surprise or distaste; they were looks of complicity…looks of assessment. Geoffrey had not lacked reason when he put me up as the inventor of it all; for the fact that it was supposedly written by a very young officer, rather appetising (though I say it myself) and hitherto presumed innocent, gave it additional flavour, headier spice.
All this I began to understand when the reading finished. For a few moments there was complete silence. Then the bugler who was to play Buttons came across to me with a great grin on his spotty but amiable face and said:
‘We’d better start practising, sir, hadn’t we?’
This remark was greeted by general and genial laughter, led by Geoffrey. People now formed little groups, discussing the interpretation of their parts, thinking up refinements of humour and lewdness, devising ways round technical difficulties. The transformation scene and Fingerella’s coach? Deck up one of the jeeps and conceal it under a camouflage net until it was needed. And so on. All was contrivance and good will. ‘We’re all going to have a lot of fun out of this,’ the Sergeant-Major said; ‘we’re really going to live our parts, I can see that already.’
And live our parts we did. Almost overnight, reality for us became Fingerella and Fingerella became reality. We were not soldiers rehearsing for a pantomime; we were pantomime artists who were compelled to soldier. And soon it had gone farther: we were the creatures of the pantomime. Whether on stage or off, we existed almost wholly in the characters we were allotted for the play, we addressed each other and behaved to each other in terms of the world of Fingerella. Those who were not in the show, our audience, accepted us in our roles and treated us accordingly, so that before long the whole Company became a theatre, the players being distinguished but not alienated from the rest, both parties recognising and responding to the needs of the other. We, the players, required and received privilege and applause; our audience required and received a sense of authorised and indemnified Saturnalia. Geoffrey was now addressed by all ranks as ‘Baron’, myself as ‘Fingers’, the Sergeant Major as ‘Dandini’, et al., et al. Even as we gave our orders we clowned and sang and pranced and postured as our new avatars would have us; and yet in all essentials we were still obeyed, for Festival could not extend, it was tacitly understood, to military breakdown.
This alone provided, liberation was entire. Before long we sampled the erotic entertainments and connections suggested by the script, while the audience eagerly followed and improvised on our example. By the time the day came for the actual performance, the Company was a huge party of sylvan pleasure, with few abstainers and those tolerant. The performance itself was rendered with total naturalism down to the most intimate detail (mutandis in physiological areas duly mutatis) and was succeeded by a public orgy. Myself [said Fingel] I’ve always gone in for the girls, but I still remember with delight the ministrations of that merry little bugler, to say nothing of the other attentions which Fingerella naturally attracted. The Senior Lieutenant, as became his role of Prince, was particularly assiduous and turned out to have some quite surprising talents…
But just as this state of affairs had emerged and flourished only because we were so completely cut off in our own artificial world, so it came to a necessary and automatic end as soon as we were called back to Battalion. No one needed to make a special point of it or give explicit orders; we all knew it must finish from the moment we left that temple in the forest. On the morning we mustered for departure, everyone was ‘Sergeant’ or ‘Sir’ or ‘Private So-and-So’ again; and although I have reason to suppose that one or two liaisons that had been formed were carried on in a cautious and vestigial fashion for a few months after we returned to real life, the party was over and by common consent of the revellers was consigned to oblivion forever.
“And so that,” said Fingel, “is the reality behind that note in the Journal. That is at the bottom of my reputation as a producer of pantomimes. It certainly went with a swing – but not at all in the way the Second in Command thinks. And then of course, it wasn’t really my baby. Geoffrey Ham was ‘the onlie begetter’ of that little masterpiece.”
“What happened to him?”
“A couple of minor staff appointments, then retirement. But I’ve still got a copy of the script in my tin trunk.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of putting it on here?”
“I have the Second in Command’s permission. You heard him give it to me – after he had specifically called on you to witness the conversation.”
“He didn’t know what he was agreeing to.”
“Then he should have made further enquiries instead of just foisting the job off on me. He was bloody well asking for trouble. I shall enjoy watching his face while the Brigadier gets an earful of that lot.”
“You’ll never get the thing off the ground,” I said. “The last time you did that show was with a Company of men driven half potty by boredom in the middle of the Korean forest. As you said, they’d been cut off from everything and everybody for so long that they thought anything they did just didn’t count any more. Hence…those rather extraordinary side-effects.”
“Well, in our case we have all been driven half potty by boredom in the middle of the Arabian desert. We’ve been cut off for long enough. A good many chaps may feel that anything they do here ‘just doesn’t count any more’.”
“But this is a whole battalion, with all the apparatus and official routine of a battalion, established in a semi-permanent camp. We’re not cut off from the world in the sense your Company was. We’re not all that far from Aden, and we’ve got a Brigadier coming to visit us on Boxing Day.”
“I agree,” said Fingel, “that we are somewhat less remote than B Coy was in Korea; so I don’t think what you call ‘the side-effects’ are likely to happen here. But I see no reason why Fingerella should not be well received by the men merely as a bawdy romp.”
“The moment you start rehearsing, word will go to the Colonel or the Second in Command. And then look out.”
“We shall rehearse in secret.”
“You’ll have to get copies of the script made on the machine in the Orderly Room. As soon as somebody sees the first page – ”
“– I’ll make my own copies on my own duplicator. That’s what Geoffrey Ham did.”
“Are you determined to land yourself in trouble?”
“I am determined to obey the orders of the Second in Command. A pantomime he has commanded,” said Fingel, “and a pantomime he shall have.”
Fingerella, as Fingel had foretold, was well received, indeed rapturously received, by the audience – by all of it, that is, except the Colonel, the Second in Command and our guest, the Brigadier. This latter, a lean and fibrous officer very young for his rank, sulked venomously throughout, but when asked by the Colonel at an early stage if he wanted the show to be stopped, shook his head and ordered that it should carry on. Just before the Finale, however, he rose swiftly to his feet and marched out at 160 to the minute, while the Colonel and the Second in Command (both portly men) tried absurdly to keep step in his wake. Later on, Fingel was sent for.
“I’m off,” said Fingel when he reappeared in our quarters; “I’ve got eight hours to pack and go.”
“You do not surprise me. Back to the Depot to tender your resignation? Or to begin five years’ hard with the Trucial Oman Scouts?”
“Oh dear me, no, old bean. I’m to catch the RAF Despatch Plane from Aden to Malta. It seems that there is a vacancy at Corps Headquarters there – in Intelligence. Quite a cosy billet, even if the Maltese wines are rather coarse, and certainly preferable to this desert. My appointment, by the way, is in the rank of Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel.”
“That’s what the Brigadier had to say to you?”
“Yes. He was asked to nominate someone for the job only the other day. He thinks I’m just the man.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He wants me out of his Brigade, right?”
“Right. But what have you done to de
serve promotion and a cushy appointment?”
“More than you might think. You remember my telling you about the Prince in the original production of Fingerella?”
“The Senior Lieutenant in your Company? The one who was…‘assiduous’ in his attentions?”
“That’s it. A very assiduous man in everything he did. So assiduous that he is now one of our youngest Brigadiers; our Brigadier, in fact. It was interesting to meet him again. He left the battalion soon after Korea and I hadn’t seen him since. When I heard he was to take over this Brigade, I said to myself, ‘Perhaps he’ll do something for an old chum’, but I wasn’t quite sure how to…jog his powers of recollection. Then, when the Second in Command ordered a pantomime, I suddenly saw my way clear.”
“But you tried to refuse to do one.”
“Feigned reluctance,” said Fingel; “good tactics. The Second in Command was so relieved when he finally got his way with me that he didn’t ask any questions about what I intended to cook up…which was a soufflé surprise for our distinguished guest.”
“Sheer blackmail. I’m amazed that he sat so much of it through.”
“It lured him down memory lane perhaps, despite himself. And what memories. No wonder he couldn’t quite take the Wedding Scene with Fingers in the Finale. It says the last word about the Prince’s eccentric tendencies – from which his own were not far removed. Geoffrey Ham was a skilful caster.”
“What did the Brigadier say when he saw you this afternoon?”
“He was spare of speech. Not a single overt reference to the past. ‘This afternoon’s production,’ he said, ‘has convinced me that you would be better employed elsewhere. Your undoubted talents recommend you for promotion.’ It was his way of admitting that he owed me.”
“He has paid very handsomely.”
“I suppose so.” Fingel sighed and put three handkerchiefs embroidered with my initials into his tin trunk. “I’ll be missing you, old bean,” he said, “but at my age one can’t neglect offers of advancement.”
