Once Is Enough

by Miles Smeeton

  Beryl pointed to a guano-covered rock in a little bay, with pelicans perched upon it. ‘I’m sure that’s where I used to bathe,’ she said, ‘and Tanny’s house, where I stayed, was just up on the cliff above. I believe it was destroyed in the earthquake soon after I left.’ As we were looking for it the towrope broke. We picked up the end and passed it back to our tug, but it parted again so we passed them one of our lines, and that brought us into smooth water again, in the Boca Chica, a narrow passage between Quinquina Island and the southern shore. I was glad that we hadn’t attempted to come in under our jury-rig.

  Another mile or so and we were passing down a long stone breakwater, the outer wall of the Arsenale, and then down and under the stem of the Chilean battleship Latorre once H.M.S. Canada, who fought at Jutland and now was immobile and outdated and shortly to be scrapped, but with her great racecourses of decks, her huge guns and her severe uncluttered lines, she filled the whole bay with the dignity of her personality. We dipped our ensign as we passed, and she acknowledged the salute. For weeks to come she covered our decks with soot from her galley fires, for she baked the bread, or so it was said, for the whole of the Navy Base.

  As we came alongside a row of officers, drawn up for some reason quite unconnected with us opposite a Navy transport, turned about and faced us, and the senior officer, wearing a sword, took a pace to his front and gave us a formal salute. We felt very undressed for such a ceremonial reception, and I could only answer with a low bow. As soon as we were tied up to the quay, another officer came up and introduced himself as Lieutenant Soulodre, and from then on we became one of his problems, for most of the problems in the Arsenale eventually devolved on him. He became a Commandante while we were there, and as far as we were concerned, we thought that no promotion could have been more justly earned.

  He was always well turned out and always charming. He had a broad intelligent face, and his eyebrows met over his nose, partly because they grew that way and partly because he was usually puzzling over one of his problems. If a submarine couldn’t dive, or a bow had to be straightened, or a dock gate leaked, or a floating crane was aground, everyone came to Soulodre. For the next few months we were going to bother him with all kinds of questions, and when he saw us a mildly harassed look would come over his face, but he usually stood his ground, if it was obvious that we were making directly for him. Fortunately he spoke English well, although I don’t think that he liked to do so.

  ‘Are you ready to be picked out now?’ he asked, ‘because we’ll be able to do it in a few moments.’

  We set to work to get the jurymasts down, and it only took a few minutes before they were down on the deck and the rigging stowed. As soon as we’d finished Lieutenant Soulodre returned.

  ‘I am sorry now,’ he said, ‘the crane has broken down, but it is of no matter because we shall use the floating crane, but it must be at nine o’clock tomorrow morning because of the tide. I am only sorry that you will have to stay another night on the yacht. Tomorrow when we put the yacht on shore you will have to take everything out, and we will have to try and store it somewhere.’

  ‘Can you lend us some packing cases, and fix a place for us to stow it?’

  ‘I will do my best.’ Lieutenant Soulodre’s best was usually very effective.

  For the last time for many months we slept on board Tzu Hang. In the morning we were towed round to another wall by two sailors in a rowing boat. A large floating crane was already in position and a bed had been made for Tzu Hang’s keel on the dock wall. There was no sign of any spreaders, and there was no time to arrange them, but we were assured by the crew of the crane that she would suffer no damage from the slings, which they padded with sacks. Owing to our lack of Spanish we were very much in their hands, and all we could do was to pretend we were as cool and unperturbed as possible. The slings were adjusted, the crane began to clank and puff and hiss, and Tzu Hang was hauled crudely and crookedly out of the water. She hung above our heads, and in our imagination seemed to grow thin before our startled eyes from the pressure of the slings. Her rail bent and there were some loud cracks from the capping. We could see that her hull was clean, with only a few goose-barnacles growing here and there, but there were some ugly scars on the port side aft, where the broken mizzenmast had gouged her. The crane swung her in over her bed and then let her down in a series of runs and jerks, until at last she was laid gently on her bed, undamaged except for a cracked rail capping. After she had been shored up and wedged I noticed that she was leaning slightly to one side.

  ‘Muy bueno,’ someone laughed, ‘she’s leaning the right way, against the winter gales.’

  I laughed too, but I wouldn’t have thought it funny, if I hadn’t believed that we would be in the water before the winter gales were really blowing. Months later when north-westerly gales blew down the channel and buffeted her savagely while we worked inside, we used to think comfortably that we were leaning in towards them.

  As soon as we were safely ashore a tractor arrived towing a trailer loaded with packing cases, and we set to work to unload the ship, wiping all the tins over with a greasy rag before we stowed them. While we were at work a blue jeep drew up near us, and a grey-headed, slightly built man stepped out. He seemed deceptively gentle as he came towards us, and he greeted us almost diffidently. ‘I’m Islay Young,’ he said, ‘Tanny’s brother-in-law.’ He had light-blue eyes, steely blue they could be, I thought, when I looked at his determined mouth and chin. He was one of the most liked and respected commanders, when he was on the active list, and sometimes one of the most feared too, and he was a legend now. He had commanded the two sailing ships of the Navy before the Esmeralda, and one of them he had sailed round the Horn from east to west. ‘I never allowed sail to be taken in without reference to me, when I was below decks,’ he told me once, ‘but every officer of the watch always knew that he could put sail on.’

  He turned to Beryl now and said, ‘I think that I was commanding the Navy Base, when you were here just before the war, but I don’t think that I had the pleasure of meeting you, not true?’

  ‘Oh, then I must’ve got a pair of Chilean navy trousers from you. I wore them for ages.’

  ‘Well, not from me, from the stores, not true? I came to tell you,’ he went on, ‘that I am most sorry that I shall be away for a few weeks, but when 1 return you must all come and stay with me. Jack, Tanny’s eldest boy, lives just over the hill there, and he is going to look after you for the time being.’

  ‘But that’s all an awful nuisance for you; we wanted to find a flat or a house we could hire somewhere near the dockyard if possible, because we’ll be here for a month or so.’

  ‘Well, actually there really aren’t any available, but anyway it’s quite out of the question. We couldn’t hear of it. You are going to stay with us.’ He spoke with the authority of the quarterdeck for his own family in their house by the water, on the southern shore of the Boca Chica, for Tanny, in her rambling house on the hills above, and for Jack, in the little sheltered valley, over the hill behind the Arsenale.

  The arrival of Tzu Hang was quite an event in the Arsenale, and a constant stream of workmen and ratings bent on various tasks and errands found that their shortest way was the circuitous route, which led them along the sea wall and past Tzu Hang. The biggest draw was the blue-eyed cat, and her fame spread quickly through the base. They found soon that if they miaowed in imitation of a cat, she ran and peered down at them from the rail, and although Pwe soon tired of it, all afternoon there was a stream of self-conscious and miaowing seamen walking past the ship. Just in front of us on the wall another wooden ship was being rebuilt, frame by frame and plank by plank. She was called La Fortuna and the carpenters at work on her were the most enthusiastic of the miaowers, and soon spoilt the market for the others, but they all became our good friends during the time we stood side by side on the sea wall.

  We were finished in time for our boxes to be taken away and put into storage, and soon after six
o’clock, when the Arsenale had closed down, and the green train which takes the throng of workers on a free ride to Talcahuano town had puffed away on the edge of the road which runs along the bay shore, Jack arrived with his truck to transport us to his home.

  The truck climbed the steep cobbled road to a village nearly a thousand feet above the harbour, and Jack stopped for a moment so that we could look down into the bay. There was Latorre with her four great mooring chains, and there were the grey rows of corvettes, minesweepers, and landing craft, moored stern on to the quays, whose maintenance gave Lieutenant Soulodre so many problems; and amongst them all was our own particular problem, a small white spot amongst the grey. We drove down a winding gravel road into a valley, to a house with a tennis-court, by a grove of eucalyptus trees. It was all very peaceful after the rush of the day.

  When we unpacked the box of clothes from the forecabin, we found that Oscar had helped himself to all my new Australian drip-dry shirts, and to a selection of Beryl’s dresses. He had picked only the best. There are rogues on every waterfront, but I think that Oscar was something different, a specialité du maison.

  Next day a telegram arrived from Clio. ‘Gosh I miss all the fun,’ it said. ‘Isn’t Tzu Hang wonderful.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  REPAIRS IN TALCAHUANO

  ‘How long do you think it will take to repair Tzu Hang?’ we asked Lieutenant Soulodre.

  ‘I think that we should be able to do it in three weeks, because the Admiral has said that we must go ahead with it. But first I must have the drawings for the repairs; and as for a hollow mast, we have not yet made a hollow mast for a yacht.’

  ‘John will build the masts, and the doghouse, the hatches, and the woodwork for the rudder, if he has time, but we will want repairs doing inside, the hull painting, a complete engine overhaul, and various other things such as the rudder fittings.’

  ‘You will have to make me a list of all that you require, and the drawings, and then estimates will be prepared by the various departments. But before any work is done it will be necessary to pay a deposit to cover the estimates. We have to conform to those regulations because we do a lot of civilian work here.’

  ‘What about the wood for the masts, the rudder, and the doghouse?’

  ‘All material you will have to buy outside the Arsenale. The wood for the doghouse should be lingue and the wood for the rudder should be roble, but we haven’t any wood for the masts. We have some scaffolding planks of Oregon pine in the Arsenale, and perhaps I can arrange for some of those to be made available.’

  John spent the next few days searching for wood, and in making his drawings, but he could find no seasoned wood anywhere. Beryl and I were not certain how far the kindness of the authorities in the Navy Base would extend, but we drew up a list of everything from overhauling the engine to the repair of the typewriter.

  While we were waiting for the estimates, we transferred from Jack’s sun-drenched home behind Talcahuano to Tanny’s rambling house, high on the hill above the Boca Chica, surrounded by groves of eucalyptus and pine, and a burnt downland of pasture, cut by deep bush-filled gorges running down to the sea. Here we transported the wood for the doghouse, and John started work, while Beryl and I, when we could get a lift, went down to Talcahuano, and began to clean up in Tzu Hang.

  Our arrival at Tumbez, as the big old house was called, coincided with the end of the apple season, and every room and corridor in the house, except the living-room, was piled high with apples, with narrow footpaths leading between precariously balanced mounds of Coxes and Kings, and any night voyage was apt to set off a thunderous avalanche of apples, cascading across floors and down stairs.

  Tanny was an addict of drama, preferably real drama, such as fire or flood or revolution, but if these were not available, her roving eye searched far and wide for anything that would tickle her sense of the dramatic. She found excitement in the daily race to find an egg as soon as a hen cackled. If the cook got there first, which she often did, because she was as alert as Tanny and often nearer the hen, Tanny was convinced that she had stolen the egg.

  When all else failed she turned to the cat. ‘Your cat has attacked my maid,’ she announced one day, her dark eyes sparkling. ‘They are terrified of it,’ she went on, ‘and it growls at them and chases them out of the room.’ But she was delighted with the idea of a cat as class-conscious as she was herself.

  Tumbez, lovely and serene though it was, was too far away from Talcahuano, and although Tanny, with typical Chilean hospitality, pressed us to stay as long as we liked, we wanted some flat or house, nearer to the Arsenale. One day we met Edward Cooper, who had a business in Talcahuano, and who motored down each day from his home in Concepcion. Edward’s father had been British Consul in Chile for fifty years, and Edward, although born in Chile, had been sent to school in England. He had returned to Chile just before the war, and when it broke out he had gone back to England and joined the Navy, as so many others of the British community had done. If he had had a rubber stamp on his forehead, ‘Public School and Navy’, it couldn’t have been more obvious than his clothes, his tie, and his restrained manner proclaimed. It was as if a roc had swooped on Throgmorton Street, picked up a businessman at a venture, and had dropped him in the office in Talcahuano, with its narrow dusty road outside, in a perpetual state of being about to be repaired.

  Soon after we had met he asked us if we would like to stay with him during the rest of our time in Chile, at his home in Concepcion.

  ‘Good heavens,’ Beryl said, ‘you may be letting yourself in for more than you know.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have the house and the maids, and it really does them good to have someone to look after besides myself. They get bored.’

  ‘But it might turn into quite a long stay. Two or three months.’

  ‘That’s all right. And I’ll be able to run you down to Talcahuano each morning in the car, but I can’t bring you back. There’s an old retainer in the office that I always drop at his home on the way back. But still you’ll be able to get back by bus.’

  ‘Then we have a cat.’

  ‘I have a cat too. A ginger tom. I expect that he’ll relish a visitor.’

  It was arranged that after we’d stayed with Admiral Young, we should move up to Concepcion and live with Edward in the Avenida Pedro Valdivia and this was to become our home while we remained in Chile.

  One morning I found Lieutenant Soulodre superintending the docking of a submarine at one end of the dry docks. As soon as he had a moment to spare I asked him how things were going.

  ‘Today it is bad,’ he said. ‘I have the estimates.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Oh, very bad. They are too much. Far too much. We must go to the office. Vamos.’

  On the arrival at the office he showed me the figure, and it was almost as much as we had paid for Tzu Hang.

  ‘Good heavens!’ I said, appalled at the sight of it. ‘But we are going to do practically all the carpentry ourselves. We can’t possibly pay all that, and all the wood we have to buy outside anyway.’

  ‘Still perhaps we can do something about it. Now you see this for the carena, too much, you must do it yourselves. And for this overhaul of the engine, too much, I will see the officer in charge of the transportation section and perhaps we can arrange something. And for this, too much, you must get it done outside. And for this, outside. And for this, it’s altogether too expensive here, you must have it done outside. And for this repair of the cabin below decks, it would be much better if you did it all yourselves. Now you see how much we have managed to cut it. It is only half the amount now.’

  The fond illusion I had been entertaining of getting something done for nothing faded as quickly as usual, but I was still horrified at the expense. ‘But all we’ve done is to transfer the work from “inside” to this beastly “outside”. It will still have to be paid for. Really all we are paying for here is the haul out and the hire of the ground she’s standin
g on. And there are only six pieces of Oregon and we need twelve, and then of course this engine overhaul is more than the cost of the engine when it was new.’

  Lieutenant Soulodre was really distressed at the cost, but he was caught up in the usual conflict between the wish to do something outside the regular run, and the restrictions imposed by red tape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think that you will have to speak to Admiral Young. He will be able to arrange something.’

  As soon as Admiral Young returned, we went off to see him, and he came with us next day to the office. He left us outside and went in and when he returned he showed us a revised estimate, which was better suited to our means, but as far as I could make out the estimate, for which I had to make a deposit, bore little relation to the bill which might actually be presented at the end of the work.

  ‘It is best not to enquire too much, not true?’ said the Admiral. ‘Perhaps it would become more expensive.’

  ‘But there are only six pieces of Oregon, and we want twelve.’

  ‘I think that perhaps we may get some more, but we must wait and see, not true?’

  With this anxious and nebulous financial arrangement we had to keep our fingers crossed and our hopes on the Admiral. The actual cost of the haul out and hire of the ground on which Tzu Hang now stood was no more than we would have expected in any North American port. The cost of all material was high, and the cost of labour was altogether out of our reach. During our stay we had a great deal of assistance in all kinds of work, both officially approved, and unofficially, but we never knew whether a record was kept, and whether we were being charged or not. We followed the Admiral’s advice and didn’t enquire too much, but the list of odd jobs that we had done, the ‘could you just fix this for me?’ kind of job, grew and grew. It was a hair-raising business and it was not until we left that we found a lot of the work had been ‘overlooked’.