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As far as she was concerned it was over. Not for me. Brought up on silent films with a romantic Irish father who told me I was descended from the Kings of Connaught, I played out the scene of the rejected lover. Sitting on a bench in Ladywell Recreation Ground, with a quarter of jelly babies, I would slump in the corner of the benches in a series of 'scorned attitudes' hoping she would come looking for me, like James Cagney in Shanghai Lil. I would do anything up to twenty-seven dejected poses a night, before the Park Keeper threw me out. What I needed was consolation. All my mother gave me was Weetbix. Playing local dances, I would buy ginger ale, disguise it in a whisky glass hoping she would see me taking gulps in between trumpet solos, pretending I was drunk. I was now Robert Taylor. I would play sobbing trumpet choruses until even the Jews would shout 'Stop! Enough is enough.' I would wait at night on the opposite side to her house, with my Marks and Spencer's mackintosh (5s 3d in a sale) coat collar up, making sure when she came home with the new boyfriend, I would be standing under the gas lamp, smoking a cigarette. When they arrived, I would throw down the cigarette, stamp on it, place my hands in my pockets then walk away whistling Bing Crosby's 'The Thrill is Gone.' I did that every night of December. I got pneumonia. Just what I wanted! I wrote and told her I was dying! She sent me a get well card. I thought, one evening I would throw myself from the bandstand and crash at the feet of her and her partner. Before I could, she moved her dancing habitat elsewhere. On the night I planned it, I sat sweating. Finally I had to go to the Gents and remove the padding stuffed up the front of my shirt to take the shock of the fall. She met someone with a car, I used to give chase, shouting threats. After a year of this I'd had the shoes resoled fifty times, chased the car 1073 miles, lost hope and had calves like Nurayev, but, I imagined, like Camille, she would return one winter's night to die in my arms at 50 Riseldine Road, Brockley Rise, S.E.26. I'd offer her Champagne (Ovaltine), she would ask me to play 'Honeysuckle Rose' on my trumpet and then die. It didn't happen.
"Rommel?" "Gunner Who?" A Confrontation in the Desert, by Spike Milligan.
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