Once Is Enough

by Miles Smeeton

  Our next problem was the rudder-post and fittings. There was no bronze rod or bar available in the Arsenale of sufficient diameter to make a new rudder-post. Lieutenant Soulodre told us that our best bet was to try the big coal-mine of Shwager’s at Coronel. In this coal kingdom, whose shafts spread for miles under the sea, there were all kinds of material stored, and they were supposed to be able to do almost anything in their shops. I went to the manager’s office. He was an Englishman, a strong and incisive character. He looked at the drawings and said, ‘I don’t think that we have bronze of that type here. The only thing we can do is to make you a steel shaft, coated with bronze. Anyway Bob Smith, the engineer in charge of all the shops, is away. When he gets back you can see him. Anything we can do for you we will do. Cost price.’

  Beryl and I didn’t like the idea of a bronze-coated steel post, thinking that electrolysis would get to work somewhere, and for the time being we forgot about the facilities that had been offered us at Coronel.

  Every day now we were at work once more on Tzu Hang. The engine had been taken out at the same time as she was put on the shore, and we set about cleaning her from stem to stern, starting with the bilges. During this time we stayed with Admiral and Señora Young, in their lovely house by the beach. Whenever a Navy ship entered or left the bay, they always closed the shore and blew a salute on their whistle, and the Admiral and his Señora, or Cecilia, his daughter, for he did have a daughter, would run out to acknowledge it, by waving a tablecloth or a sheet. Cecilia was as vigorous as her father, and she could launch a boat in the surf like a fisher-boy. ‘You should see the way she handles a boat,’ John said, ‘and she never lets me row.’

  When the Admiral went into Talcahuano in his jeep, he drove at a furious speed, but usually no policeman would dream of stopping him. It happened once when I was with him, but the Admiral handled the poor mistaken man gently. ‘He is a new man … a fool,’ he said to me afterwards, but I think that in his mind he had lashed him to the mast and ordered his punishment. As he flashed through the Navy Base, although he had retired ten years ago, he was saluted by all the officers and sailors. He was immensely respected by everyone, except perhaps the women of his house. Like Nelson, he did not always seem to have them fully under control.

  The Admiral gave me Cape Horn by Felix Riesenberg. As I read it I felt my pulse quicken, and I couldn’t read it for long, as I found it too disturbing. I thought that I had every intention of taking Tzu Hang the easy way up through the Panama Canal, and into the warm weather and the trade wind seas, but perhaps it wasn’t so.

  One day I heard Beryl say to the Admiral: ‘Which way would you go back to England, Islay? Through Magellan or up through the Panama?’

  ‘Well, of course, I should go through Magallanes, but then I should do it at the right time of year, not true? Actually I think that you have less wind in the Channels in the winter than in the summer, but then you have so much darkness, so I think that the best time is to go down at the end of the summer or at the end of the winter. Now would be a good time for example, or in October. Of course your husband should really see the Patagonian Channels, it is a new world, not true? And then you would be in sheltered water all the way.’

  ‘Do you hear that?’ she said. ‘Do you hear what Islay says?’

  ‘Yes, I heard, but I thought that you didn’t want to go down the Channels, because they’re so cold and wet. At least that’s what I’ve always heard before.’

  ‘Not always,’ the Admiral said. ‘Not always. Sometimes there is beautiful weather. But you can’t say that you’ve seen Chile, until you have seen the Canales, not true?’

  ‘Anyway I don’t want to go beating into the Caribbean against the trade wind,’ said Beryl.

  As the doghouse and hatches took shape on Admiral Young’s verandah, for we had moved all the carpentry with us, Beryl and I continued our scrubbing and cleaning in the Navy yard. As we worked we found all sorts of odd things lodged in the strangest of places, but we never found the hatchet which we always kept in a canvas pocket by the side of the cook’s seat in the galley, and immediately below the hatch. It had been sadly missed during the days after the smash, when we needed it badly to split up wood for the fire. We had always assumed that it was under the engine, the only inaccessible spot in the ship, but now that the engine was out we could find no trace of it, and the only reasonable assumption was that it had gone out of the hatch when we were upside down. It was another indication of what had happened to us, but we were to find more graphic proof, when Beryl started to clean out the forecabin.

  One day she called me forward and pointed to the deckhead by the bulkhead at the end of her berth. ‘Look at that,’ she said.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘It’s my tin of face powder.’

  Squeezed between the top of the bulkhead and the deckhead and squashed absolutely flat, part of a small round tin protruded from the bulkhead. A pinkish powder, set in a hard paste, had been squeezed out of it.

  ‘It was in the shelf there,’ she said, pointing to a shelf at the head of her berth, and to a small partition in the shelf, which was immediately below the tin. ‘How on earth did it get stuck in there?’

  ‘Good Lord! It must’ve happened when we turned over … in a somersault as you said. It could’ve only happened like that. As we went upside down the tin must’ve slid down the bulkhead to the deckhead, and then when the masts began to go, the twin forestays pulled this deck-beam up and cracked it, and lifted the deck, so that the tin slipped in between the deck and the bulkhead, and the moment the mast broke, the deck snapped back and caught it.’

  ‘I vote we leave it there, because we can only dig it out with a chisel, and no one is going to believe it if we take it away. It’s really the best proof of what happened.’ So we left it there.

  The weeks passed quickly even if the progress on Tzu Hang was slow. The doghouse and hatches were finished and installed, and the new perspex lights and the windows were fitted. The doghouse was a beautiful job of lower and more graceful design than the old one, with its corners dovetailed, and strong corner posts cross-bolted into the deck-beams and carlins. To Beryl and me it was a miracle of carpentry, but John started to worry about the wood, which began to check as it dried. ‘But you won’t lose that one,’ he promised us.

  We had written to England for some mast-track and to a friend in Panama for some resorcinol resin glue for the mast. Meanwhile John turned his attention to the rudder.

  We were well into the Chilean winter and Tzu Hang was snug once more. Every day the three of us would eat our lunch on board, while the fire burnt without smoking in the stove, and across the football ground a loudspeaker blared Spanish tunes for the entertainment of the dockyard workers during their lunch hour. The musty smell of dampness and mould and dirty bilges had gone from Tzu Hang, and now there was the clean smell of paint and wood shavings.

  The change of John’s activities from doghouse and skylights to the rudder marked a new period in our fortunes in Chile. It marked the period of Señor Martinez as opposed to the period of Lieutenant, now Commandante, Soulodre. Soulodre was in charge of most of the things that went on in the Arsenale, and with the exception of the Automobile Section, Señor Martinez seemed to be in charge of all the rest. Commandante Soulodre had the docks, the cranes, the panel beaters, the forge, the welders, the huge machines that sliced up armourplate, and most of the noisemakers; Señor Martinez was in charge of the big carpenters’ shop, with all the wood-working machines, and the Taller de Botes, where all the small boats of the fleet were repaired. Whereas Commandante Soulodre seemed to be oppressed by the weight of his responsibility, Señor Martinez bore his as lightly as a feather. He was a civilian employee in the Arsenale, and he gave the impression of being a man of considerable means, who had accepted this employment to gratify a hobby.

  Señor Martinez’ moustache was shaved to a narrow line above his lip, and his eyebrows were almost permanently raised as if in surpris
e or mild disdain. He was always impeccably dressed, and he walked through his shops leaving a delicate whiff of scent, like a vapour trail, behind him. If ever he touched a clean piece of wood, he dusted the tips of his fingers together afterwards, and then wiped them with a spotless handkerchief. I never saw him touch a dirty piece. He refused to attempt English and regarded my attempts at Spanish with ill-concealed disgust, and once, after I had polished up and made a short speech, in what I thought was excellent Spanish, he handed me a dictionary and said, ‘You really must speak Spanish.’ When Beryl approached him in her old paint-stained dungarees and a cloth tied round her hair, he leant towards her courteous and attentive; it was fascinating to watch him, perfectly groomed, a quizzical and almost affectionate look on his face, while she showered him with her nouns and infinitives.

  Whereas I regarded Commandante Soulodre as my especial friend and confidant, to whom I applied for assistance, Beryl was quite enchanted by Señor Martinez, who was no less than astounded by her. She could get anything that she wanted out of him. John made no requests from anyone, but now that the scene of his work, in the Señor Martinez period, was transferred to the Taller de Botes, the quality of his work made him master of all the carpenters there. Unasked for he had all the help he required, and he used only three words: ‘Good’ and ‘Not good’.

  The Señor Martinez period also coincided with our transfer to Concepcion, and to the luxury of Edward’s house in the Avenida Pedro Valdivia, a luxury that we hadn’t experienced since before the war, and are never likely to experience again. The house was ruled by Carmen, an old maid who had served Edward’s family for fifty years. She regarded us all as children, and Edward she referred to as ‘Eduardito’. He told us that she could be as stubborn as a mule if she was crossed. Lydia was the lame little cook, as jolly as a sparrow, who provided matchless meals without discussion, who always opened the gates for the car in the morning, and waved a coy goodbye. Teresa, usually known as ‘the little girl’, was the general handmaid. ‘The little girl’ was a thorn in Edward’s side, but she went with Lydia, and was therefore indispensable. She waited at table, and always nudged us if we didn’t notice that she was waiting to serve us, with a thump like a mule’s kick, and after she had put the plates with the bird pattern on the table, she used to run round, clicking her tongue, and spinning the plates round, so that the heads of the birds all faced inwards. We all thought that Edward’s problem of her employment might be solved if she married the gardener, and at times there did seem to be signs of a budding romance.

  From now on, leaving the cat in the care of Carmen, Lydia, and Teresa, we went every morning to Talcahuano with Edward, returning every evening by bus, and when we got back the shabby unwanted girl flowered under Beryl’s kindness, and told her long stories about the adored cat, ‘con los ojos azules’. The ginger tom fought every night to ensure that he had first rights when the time came, but he knew nothing about modern operations, and the cat remained as virginal, and as wayward, as when she arrived.

  We used to leave the Arsenale at about six o’clock in the evening, with numbers of naval ratings, also bound for Concepcion. Just as the attaché case in England is the badge of the commuting business-man, so the attaché case in Chile is the badge of the commuting sailor. Every morning they came flocking into the Arsenale, fat sailors, thin sailors, clean-shaven or surprisingly moustached, with their attaché cases and hurried steps, and every evening they hurried out again to make long queues for the Concepcion buses. Beryl, John and I would avoid the queue by walking half a mile in the wrong direction and catching the bus at the Torpedo Base, where it started, and thereby getting a seat instead of standing room only. In all the months of these daily journeys in crowded buses we met with nothing but good manners, and the worst that we had ever to put up with was the breath of a convivial traveller, loaded with red wine and garlic.

  By now two months had passed and John was ready to start on the masts. Señor Martinez allotted him a large space in the Taller de Botes to lay out a bed for them, and he went to select the wood from the store of scaffolding planks. When he came back he shook his head: ‘Pretty crummy,’ he said. ‘There’s a knot every foot, but I suppose that it’s the best we can do. We’ll have to stagger the knots. They’re all quite firm anyway.’

  After some difficulty we were able to get another six long planks of Oregon, and we then had sufficient for the masts and booms. We were thankful enough to get it, as it was all imported and apparently the only Oregon to be had anywhere. But now we began to be anxious about the special glue that we had sent for and which had arrived in the country weeks before. We had not got the right touch with the Customs officials, and it began to look as if we would never get it out of the shed. We were also exasperated by another set-back which had nothing to do with the Customs. The mast-track had been sent from England addressed to us in Talcahuano, on a ship calling at Valparaiso and Talcahuano. It was off-loaded at Valparaiso instead of Talcahuano, and when it was found and sent on by the next ship, it was overlooked and returned to Valparaiso. ‘But that’s nothing,’ we were told, ‘you’ll be jolly lucky if it’s not shipped back to England.’ It arrived in the end, long after John had gone and the masts were made, and months after it had first arrived in Chile. We began to wonder just how long the other shipments from London would take, and if they would ever arrive in time for us to get away with them in the spring.

  We had also been unable to solve the problem of the rudder-post, but we were getting nearer a solution. One day we had seen Commandante Soulodre on the prowl in the docks near Tzu Hang, and had tackled him again.

  ‘What you really want,’ he said, ‘is a rolled bronze propeller-shaft.’

  ‘Well, what about that?’ Beryl asked, pointing to the shaft of an old launch nearby, lying on the side of the dock.

  ‘That would do fine,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know who is in charge of these old boats. I’ll try and find out and get permission.’

  Some weeks later we saw Commandante Soulodre and Señor Martinez talking together near the same old launch. We tackled them again. ‘I have told them that we could turn down a rudder-post for them out of that propeller-shaft,’ said the Commandante, ‘but I can’t find out who owns it.’

  ‘My dear fellow, that’s mine,’ said Señor Martinez. ‘Of course you can have it. Do whatever you like with it, only don’t for heavens sake say I said so.’ I don’t think that he had ever seen the launch before.

  A few days afterwards the propeller was taken off, and then workmen came periodically to struggle with the coupling until it was cut with an oxy-acetylene flame, and the shaft was taken away to the submarine base, the only place with a lathe long enough to fit it. While this was going on the rudder fittings were cast and fitted, and the glue arrived at last from the Customs, suddenly, with a rush, and there was nothing to pay.

  It was mid-winter. The westerly gales blew great curtains of rain across the harbour, and lashed Tzu Hang so that, while we worked inside her, it was possible to imagine that we were at sea again. The wind rattled the closed doors of the Taller de Botes and chased the shavings about inside as we slid them apart a fraction to go in or come out, and it ruffled the feathers of the seagulls which sought shelter on the sandy football pitch behind Tzu Hang. Thousands of cormorants, down from Peru in search of food, struggled low across the water looking for shelter, and all along the rocky beach on the way to the Admiral’s house they stood in forlorn and disconsolate groups.

  One of the problems that the cold weather brought us was how we should get enough heat to make the glue for the masts set up. In the Taller de Botes the temperature went down into the forties, and we needed a temperature of 70° Fahrenheit for several hours. After failing to find any suitable method in the Arsenale, I went over to Coronel to talk to Bob Smith.

  Bob is another bluff and uncompromising Yorkshireman, and he was then in charge of all mechanical maintenance above ground in this vast concern of Shwager’s. But on top of bein
g in charge of the technical maintenance of the mine, he was heavily involved in a big face-lifting process that was going on, and he was very short of trained engineers. ‘I keep training them and some other outfit buys them,’ he told me later. ‘You can’t expect them to stay if they can get better wages elsewhere.’ To be trained by, or to have worked under, Bob Smith, served as a special diploma.

  He was looking over plans, a slide-rule in his hand and his long-distance glasses pushed up on his forehead, when I found him. I came to think of Bob and his slide-rule together, like a double-barrelled name. He could probably tell how much beer he could drink in half an hour without reference to it, but it seemed to appear from his pocket for almost any other problem. There were three men in his office, and when the last came out I went in. ‘You want to become one of Bob’s lost causes,’ a friend had told me, ‘and when you’re one of his causes you’re home and dry.’ I didn’t know how to become a cause with this grey-eyed man, who stared at me coldly through a haze of tobacco smoke. He wasn’t giving anything away. I told him my name and said that I hoped he’d be able to do something for me.

  ‘Everyone wants something done for them,’ he said, ‘it all depends what you want, and what you’ve got, mate,’ he said.

  I told him about the yacht.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘the Boss told me about you. You got into a kind of a mess, didn’t you? Now what do you want?’

  I told him about the mast and our heating problems.