Spike: An Intimate Memoir. Norma Farnes

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       Chapter Four

      In all the time I knew him Spike was never boring. When you consider his parents’ characters this becomes understandable. Leo Milligan grew up in County Sligo, Ireland, and followed family tradition by joining the Army at the age of fourteen. Unusually he took dance classes and was soon appearing both on military and civilian stages – sometimes blacked up for a song-and-dance act, at others dressed up as a cowboy to demonstrate his skill with a lariat. He was also a mean trumpeter. This last skill served him well and he ascended the ranks, going to India as Lance Bombardier, trumpeter. He did not neglect his Catholicism and it was at St Ignatius Church, Kirkee, in 1912, that his eye was caught by the beautiful organist. Like her future husband, Florence Kettleband came from an Army background, emigrating with her family from their Leicestershire home to India at the age of eight. She was a trained contralto and when Leo heard her sing he was smitten. They married two years later and it was not long before they started performing at regimental theatres as a double act. In Ahmednagar, on 16 April 1918, Florence gave birth to their first son, Terence Alan Milligan, a troublesome baby. As Leo often told Spike, ‘You never stopped bloody screaming.’

      The next year the family travelled on leave to England, having to be rescued when their ship struck a reef. When they finally made it back Florence got measles, which turned into pneumonia, and temporarily she went blind. To the end of her days she maintained that her sight was restored by a faith healer, and certainly her own faith never wavered, however much her older son liked to tease her about it. After she recovered the family returned to India where Leo, with Florence at his side, seemed to spend more time touring on stage, entertaining the troops, than he did on the barrack square. One of their greatest successes was putting on rodeos, with Leo trick-riding like a cowboy. These skills were entirely self-taught, another Milligan family trait. Spike joked that Leo liked the rodeos because his stetson covered a problem: he was completely bald. The rest of the time he wore a black wig which looked like ‘a dead cat nailed to his head’. One day a kite hawk snatched it from his pate and until another one arrived from England Leo wore his topee, even indoors. Spike enjoyed his parents’ shows, but he was an unwilling spectator to their passion for hunting. They would fire at ‘anything that had feathers or fur on it’. He went on to devote a large part of his life to trying to protect wildlife.

      The Milligans moved on to Burma, and their second son, Desmond Patrick, was born in Rangoon on 5 December 1925, soon after Leo had been promoted Acting Regimental Sergeant Major. They continued their comfortable colonial existence until 1933, when the post of RSM was abolished in Leo’s regiment and they were sent back to England and a two-room flat in Catford. The country was still in the grip of the Depression, but it was not long before, at the age of sixteen, Spike was at work by day and earning another ten shillings a night to sing with a band at a dance hall in South London, doubling on guitar and double bass, both of which he had taught himself to play. Leo was less successful. He set out for interviews in a Homburg and grey kid gloves, with a silver-topped ebony cane, ready to consider offers from deserving employers. They did not realize what a bargain they were getting in an ex-sergeant major who could throw a lariat, ride bucking broncos and do a soft shoe shuffle. It took twelve months but finally he got a job with Associated Press. He and Spike always said he was a journalist but as those were the days of closed shops this might have been stretching the truth, which was never a problem for Leo. Spike always remembered how Leo reacted when he was sceptical about his claim to have shot a tiger. ‘Let me ask you something, son. Would you rather have an exciting lie or the boring truth?’ There was a lot of his father in Spike.

      When he was nineteen Spike met the one true love that remained constant throughout his life, in the window of a shop in Lewisham High Street: a gold-plated Besson trumpet, price totally beyond him. No problem. He had enough for a deposit and bought it, figuring the rest could come from his employer. His bosses disagreed. Spike was still playing the clubs but his day job was with a wholesale tobacconist where he would wrap parcels of cigarettes and tobacco. It was conveniently cold in the warehouse so he wore his overcoat and some of the cigarettes found their way into its pockets. Spike sold them on at a cut price, but was caught by the foreman and arrested.

      Leo had missed the drama of the theatre and wasted no time in offering his services as advocate. After several rehearsals at home to hone his act he was ready to take centre stage at the police court. As ever, the boring truth was disregarded. Theft? Nonsense. Entrepreneurial flair in a time of hardship. ‘Look at him,’ he declared to the magistrates, pointing a finger at Spike. ‘His crime was a love of music. He needed the money to buy a violin and study classical music, but he was so poor he could never – you hear – never afford one. His only way was to pilfer stockroom goods and sell them. This has afforded him a secondhand violin which, even now, he is learning to play. Have pity on this boy. As a result of his action he could become a virtuoso.’

      It was a triumphant performance. As Leo correctly reckoned, burgeoning classical violinists got far more sympathy from magistrates than trumpeters. Spike was discharged and played his gold-plated trumpet in the Harlem Club Band, all because of an exciting lie.

      Although Spike’s family was Army on both sides he was not keen to join up when Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. He was conscripted the following year, on his twenty-first birthday, and took this trumpet with him to the 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery. Every morning he would sound the reveille, and aspects of the life must have recalled the pleasures of his childhood. It was at this time that he acquired a new name. In the services there were three common nicknames: Clarkes were called Nobby, Joneses Taffy, and tall and skinny ones often became Spike. He decided this was preferable to Terence and so, to everyone apart from his mother, Spike he was from now on.

      Spike saw a lot of action in North Africa then moved to Italy, escaping injury until he was caught in heavy fighting outside Naples in СКАЧАТЬ