From a manuscript – not known if ever published

 

Bloody Wars         article  11/3/88           Jack Trevor Story

We lay on a grassy ledge of the rock of Gibraltar very late one night, my state registered nurse and I. "Listen," she said. A very tiny weeny muffled splash of muffled oars from somewhere below us. She whispered not to talk until the smugglers were safe. My heart warmed to her. She could have been a boy. Another night I got drunk and commanded everybody in the one and only night club to obey my fascist salute, heil! The queen's photograph was ubiquitous and started my personal revolution from which I got rescued by a Spanish girl who was taking me away when suddenly we were surrounded by soldiers. "Off you go," they said to this lovely girl. They then took me to a cave in the rock and put me to bed ‑ they were the Argyle and Sutherlands, or some such name. In the morning they explained why my money was still intact and advised me to stay off Spanish brandy. I had one or two names and addresses for a time.

I tell you this because you can go there now by road. What bliss, it means you can also get away by road. That year, I was writing Wonderful Things for Frankie Vaughan and Anna Neagle (producing), one had to get a visa simply to walk a mile, to barbecue sardines on the beach at La Linea or watch the rats in their millions scatter into the bayside rocks at Algeciras to return behind you like dawn rabbits, as you walked, with all the baywater with its rock backdrop, bubbling with fish as if under a torrential downpour.

However, this visa meant half a day in Africa to get it, plane there, a small Viking ‑ well, a Viking ‑ and the MS Calpe ferry back from Tangler.

"Don't trust taxi drivers," said Laurence Harvey. who had just got married and invited me to the reception at the Rock Hotel. "Who's that girl?" I asked him. Wherever I go I pick up a girl first. Guide, driver, nurse, masseur, policewoman. "That's Dawn Adams,” he said. "Terribly sorry, I thought you knew." I don't know anything that isn't girls (not stars!) or aeroplanes or jazz guitar. I love food of course. In Tangiers I asked a taxi driver where to change money. "You give it to me," he said. I gave him everything I had got in English and he ran off with it. God, I am an idiot. I thought. I did the same thing in Madrid travelling all the way by train with a nun who shared her bread with me ‑ she was taking a girl from Scotland to El Escoriale, I don't know why ‑ and she said as I left her:

"When you get outside a taxi driver will run up and grab your cases and run away with them. He will then take you to one of his paid for ‑ you know, pesetas - chums." Sure enough as they say, it happened thus wise precisely. Make a note. And make a note that both taxi drivers looked after me. It was as if they knew what the English were saying about them. There is a latin smile of the Giaconda, deeper, deeper than English tourism which is as deep as a puddle on the European culture. Forgive me.

There was a war on. This is the only thing about Africa. I haven't been there since, but I see the news. The clerk in the ship booking hall was French and was diverted by my passport. "You are a writer!" It was rather nice, actually. Lots of girls around. Also people kept charging through the queue, breaking it up.