Nicholas Mosley - Time at War

I made the pilgrimage, some sixty miles hitch-hiking over comparatively unfrequented roads, which meant that I arrived on the scene having walked the last three miles in the heat of the day. I came across the first temple quite unexpectedly rising rather bleakly from the bushes and long grass by the side of the road. In the suddenness of the discovery I think I was a little disappointed; it was such a cold and desolate ruin; the pillars looking rather thin and forlorn under the golden heat of an Italian midday sun. But then as I wandered up beneath the grey portico I caught a glimpse of the second temple — the only temple that really matters at Paestum — a glimpse of gold more golden than the corn which shone about it; more serene and beautiful than any concentration of Italian sun. I rushed towards it in an ecstasy of wonder.

It would be impossible also to exaggerate the importance to me of being able to visit, whenever I had a break from war, the artistic treasures and beauties of Italy. They seemed to represent the efforts of humans for more than two thousand years to come to terms with their bewildering predicaments — for instance, that of claiming that they wanted peace and yet landing up in war. The large temple at Paestum was built in the sixth century BC in honour of the goddess Hera — both wife and sister of Zeus — whose chief characteristic was a jealous and vindictive rage against anyone she disapproved of, particularly any other goddess or mortal of whom Zeus was fond. She presumably provided an explanation of the rage of this kind that bedevils humans. Temples were built to placate her — monuments to order and serenity — in the hope that by this there might be a means of safeguarding loved ones and oneself, since it had not been possible to eliminate rage and jealousy altogether. Later, in Rome, I took trouble to get into the out-of-bounds Sistine Chapel and there to see Michelangelo’s depiction of the expulsion of humans from the Garden of Eden — or of their preferring to risk the freedom of being able to make their own choices rather than to submit to the confines of God’s laws. So was making art the means by which humans could both honour their freedom and hope to assuage its consequences? Indeed not abrogate it! Even the operas I was so excited by — I mentioned Tosca again in a letter home — seemed to be trying to bind up the wounds of human tragedy and absurdity by passionate incantation and melody.

Then, on my twenty-first birthday in June, I was in a train going up to rejoin my battalion which, while I had been away, had fought all the way from Cassino up past Rome and was now by Lake Trasimeno in central Italy. I was travelling with a young volunteer officer from South Africa, Christopher Cramb, who was on his way to join the battalion. I was with him when we found we had a day free in Rome and so decided on some stratagem to get into the Sistine Chapel. We tagged on to the end of a line of Roman Catholic priests who were on their way to an audience with the Pope and, once inside the Vatican, we flaked off and had been lying on our backs for some time looking at Michelangelo’s ceiling before the Swiss Guards arrived to escort us out.

One of the attractions of war is surely that it offers chances to try out one’s own brand of anarchy — protected from the social disapproval and penalties that would be incurred in peace.

In Rome I heard of Rifle Brigade friends who had been killed — Timmy Lloyd, one of the landlords of The Juke Box ; Marcus Hawkins, who had been with me on my journey to the LIR. My old school friend Anthony, who had arrived in Italy just after me, had been wounded in the foot when his sergeant had trod on one of his own antipersonnel mines, and was now temporarily back in England. My South African friend and I heard that the 2nd LIR was coming back from Trasimeno so we should wait for them in Rome: we managed some more sightseeing, then joined them at Tivoli with its beautiful fountains and gardens. There I heard of more London Irish friends who had been killed or wounded. We were then told we were all going back to have six weeks’ rest in Egypt.

So one learns to accept good fortune as well as bad. We travelled down to Taranto by train and set sail across the Mediterranean to Alexandria, and went into a camp in the desert halfway between Cairo and the Suez Canal. This was a base from which we could take turns to go on leave to Cairo, but we were happy enough for a while just to hibernate in the desert. I wrote would-be amusing letters to my sister. These were my efforts, I suppose, to insist that I still thought war was something to make jokes about –

When I was in Naples I tried to buy you some silk stockings. But what the hell was Italian for silk stockings? With extraordinary presence of mind I remembered Rossini’s opera La Gazza Ladra, which I had understood [quite erroneously, as I learned later] to mean The Silken Ladder. So without further ado I bellowed Gazza! Gazza! At a terrified youth behind a counter, and bared my elegant if slightly hairy leg. When he had recovered from the effect of this inspiring spectacle a brief but sharp discussion ensued during which he professed to understand that (a) I desired to see an orthopaedic surgeon; (b) that I wanted him to shave my legs; (c) that I was an exhibitionist; (d) that I was challenging him to show a more shapely leg himself. In the end, inevitably, he led me towards a brothel …

On the boat I bought a pipe, to emphasise the ‘outpost of empire’ pose that I envisaged. But I puffed and blew with little success. The bowl grew white hot and the spittle bubbled merrily, and the smoke burnt enough holes in my tongue to line the stomach of a carpet.

Oh dear, these jokes, how they do go on!

Could you try to get me a book by Aldous Huxley called Point Counter Point?

Mervyn went away to an education course in Beirut; so when it came my turn to go to Cairo I went with another company commander called Peter, who was an exuberant character with a large wavy moustache and the reputation of an experienced roué. We shared a room at Shepheard’s Hotel. Cairo had for long been under no threat from war, so it was once more an exotic centre for people who were happy to be away from the austerities of Britain, whether they were working at one of the seemingly innumerable Middle Eastern headquarters, or were passing through on postings or on leave. My companion Peter was not much interested in seeing sights such as the Pyramids and the Sphinx; his idea of being on leave was to go to nightclubs and set about picking up women. For the nightclubs he found a ready companion in me; about the further part of his agenda he said — ‘Don’t worry, one of us can stay out of our hotel room for an hour or two, and then vice versa.’ I said I’d be happy to do this for him, but I didn’t think he’d need to do it for me. I don’t think he quite believed me.

But we had much fun dining under the stars in the garden at Shepheard’s, getting drunk and racing in carriages like chariots to the Gezira racecourse; ‘playing Chopsticks’ (I reported to my sister) ‘on the austere Grand Piano of the Club Royale Egyptian, where it was explained that I was an indefatigable piano-tuner’. Cairo was full of people enjoying the anarchy of war, and Peter soon found himself an accomplice of the sort that he required. She said she was (and from her looks even might have been) an Eastern European countess; and when I honoured my part of the bargain by assuring them I would stay out of the hotel room for whatever time they needed, she said she was sure she could fix me up with someone later. I thanked her but said I would have a look around myself. I don’t think it was just squeamishness about venereal disease, or even residual homosexuality, that made me so reticent about sex: I think I felt that it was love that was being cried out for in war; the naggings of sex one could surely deal with on one’s own.