by John Winton
‘Talent’s not bad here at all, eh Bodger?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Not a bad figure at all, that last one.’
‘Not bad. Bit shop-soiled.’
The Bodger looked gloomily into his glass.
‘Oh come, Bodger. Since when this looking of the gift-horse in the mouth?’
‘Gift-horse?’
‘My dear old Bodger, if you haven’t learnt the signals by now, you’ve no right to call yourself an officer in charge of cadets’ training. It’s the first thing you should teach them.’
‘What are you burbling about, Chris, for God’s sake?’
‘Forget it.’
The Communications Officer returned to his scrutiny of the local talent. The Bodger looked at his glass.
‘Bolshie lot of cadets this cruise, Bodger?’
‘Eh?’
‘Bolshie this cruise?’
‘Who?’
‘Cadets. Oh, for Pete’s sake Bodger, snap out of it! What’s troubling you?’
‘Sorry, I was just thinking of all those cadets we’ve got on board.’
‘What about them?’
‘There they all are, just out of the egg, mad keen, anxious to learn and do well. Most of them, anyway. We encourage them, all of us from Admirals downwards, to be keen. And for what? For why? What’s going to happen to them all?’
‘Well, they’ll all grow up and either be promoted and become admirals, or be passed over and grow onions.’
‘That’s not what I meant at all. We talk to them about officer-like qualities, we tell them all about word of command, lecture to them about leadership, fill them up with bull and they appear to believe it. Or if they don’t believe it, they’re polite enough to conceal it. Sometimes I think those cadets on board are laughing at us, humouring us as though we were a lot of fat uncles playing bears, and other times I think they believe every word and everything we do or say has the most frightful significance for the future. It’s the second alternative which scares me, because not only are we deluding them, we’re deluding ourselves.’
‘Oh, everybody knows the whole thing is a colossal confidence trick,’ the Communications Officer said. ‘No cadet could do all he’s expected to do in that vessel and come out alive, and any one of us who tried to watch all of them all of the time would go straight round the bend.’
‘I mean something much more serious than that. If we go on as we are now, in ten years’ time there won’t be any leaders or anyone whom we can draw on for officers. I don’t mean to be snobbish in the least little bit but there used to be a class of people in the country who could be relied on to lead. They may have been queers, they may have seduced all the village girls and barred themselves up in their houses for years. They may have been megalomaniacs, or mad, or obstinate, or eccentric, or downright scoundrels but at least they knew how to lead.’
‘Bodger, you sound like a curate with doubts! Don’t you realise this is blasphemy! Don’t you know there is but one God to be worshipped and the First Lord is his prophet and his address is Whitehall?’
The Bodger thumped his fist on the table. ‘They’re not doubts, they’re certainties. Look at that cadet sitting over there. I used to know his family when we lived in their part of the world. Dewberry. They used to own a good part of the British Isles and one of his family have represented them in every war the country’s had since Agincourt. And look at him. Do you think he wants to be in the Navy? Do you think he wants to lead men? Does he hell! He probably doesn’t know what he wants but I’m damned certain he doesn’t like what he’s got! I can see the day coming in twenty years’ time when most of these lads will be coming up for Captain, when the Navy will be run by the people, for the people, on behalf of the people. It’s my favourite nightmare. Until there’s a war, of course. When that happens command will be left in the hands of a few blokes who know what they’re doing and do it without having to account for it, simply because there just isn’t time to check up on them. But the minute the shouting and tumult’s over, and all the captains and kings have departed, every Tom, Dick and Harry gets a chance to think twice about things and we go back to the good old days of “For why did you do this when you knew so and so had happened?” and “For what did you give that order when surely you were aware of the grave consequences of any continued deterioration in the so on and so on ad nauseum?” Then when a war comes along the first thing you’ve got to do is sack all the peace-time admirals and promote new ones. The wretched fellows have got used to a state where they can’t move a finger because one, they haven’t got the money, and two, they have to answer for everything to the politicians. If a rating wants anything to happen in a hurry all he’s got to do is write to his M.P. and then sit back and watch the fur fly. Did I ever tell you about a very great friend of mine called Jimmy Forster-Jones?’
The name registered immediately upon the Communications Officer.
‘The character who gassed the ship’s company’s canary?’
The Bodger thumped the table again.
‘That’s exactly what I’m getting at! Now Jimmy’s known as the character who gassed the ship’s company’s canary. In spite of the fact that Jimmy was probably the finest clearance diver the Navy’s ever had. He did more for good publicity for the Navy in those films about under-water warfare than anyone since Noel Coward. Do you know what actually happened about that canary?’
‘Well, there were various yarns going about. The one I heard….’
‘Jimmy’s a friend of mine and I heard the whole story from him and from some of the other blokes who were in the ship at the time. Jimmy was a junior two-striper in a cruiser and he had a chap in his division who had a bucket-bird. You can buy them ashore in the Far East. When the bird’s hungry it rings a little bell in its cage and you put the grub in a small basket and the bird hauls it up. Quite clever, in a monotonous sort of way. This particular bird didn’t sing, dance or recite, it just rang the bell and hauled the bucket up. Well, one day this bird’s owner, who was a bit of a bird himself, slapped in a request to see Jimmy about his bucket-bird. This character said his bird was not thriving on the messdeck. The fumes from some machinery space or other under the messdeck were making the bird cough and he wanted permission to hang the cage on the upper deck. Jimmy said O.K. but not until next week. There was an admiral’s inspection coming off in a couple of days and the cage would be in the way of cleaning so Jimmy suggested that the bird should be put in the Sick Bay until the inspection was over and then it could go on the upper deck. The bloody bird had been on the messdeck about a year already and a couple more days wouldn’t do it any harm. But this character wouldn’t have it. He said bucket-birds needed constant care and attention and they’d probably poison it in the Sick Bay or slit its throat or something. So the cage went back on the messdeck. As luck would have it the bird pegged out the very next day. When they looked at it the next morning, there it was, dead. It was probably just old, but there was the most terrible uproar about it! You know what Jolly Jack is like when he thinks the awficers are not respecting his rights.’
‘You needn’t tell me.’
‘They all nattered about it so much that they eventually came round to the idea that Jimmy had actually got up in the middle of the night and poisoned the bloody thing. You know how these things get going once they start. The owner of the bucket-bird wrote to his wife and she wrote to their M.P., complaining of the treatment her husband had received, you know, why couldn’t sailors keep their pets like everyone else and what brutes the awficers were, starving and poisoning the sailors’ dumb friends. This was just at the time when all the Marshals of the Royal Air Force were sounding off about how redundant the Navy was and this letter was just up the M.P.’s street. He wrote to the First Lord, who tackled the Board of Admiralty about it, who wrote to Jimmy’s Captain and before Jimmy could say “bucket-bird” he was up in his best bib and tucker before the Old Man.’
‘Poor old toff.’
‘T
hen the newspapers got hold of it. Front page headlines. “Simple Humanities Unknown in Navy.” “What Would Nelson Have Said?” “Bucket-Bird Bloodbath.” “Canary Carnage.” You probably saw them.’
‘Yes, I remember them.’
‘Clergymen started writing for the Sunday newspapers about it and the Daily Disaster ran a special feature about the Navy bringing in everything from Captain Bligh to the Invergordon Mutiny. They even unearthed some cracked old retired commander living in Leicestershire and psychoanalysed him. The poor old sod found he’d been a sadist all his life and hadn’t known anything about it. The Navy got beaten by the Army at Twickenham the next day and the Daily Disaster ran a special jubilee edition with all the print running sideways. Then the R.S.P.C.A. chimed in and old ladies began to hiss poor Jimmy in the street. Well, inside a week there was a full scale nausea. Chaps coming down from the Admiralty and Jimmy getting into swords and medals every time the bell struck. The part that really hurt Jimmy was when an old lady who ran an aviary wrote him a letter saying that she didn’t think he was as bad as everyone said he was and would he come for a day and see over her aviary and see for himself that tiny defenceless birds could be charming companions--what the hell are you laughing at?’
The Communications Officer was leaning back in his chair with an expression of pain on his face. He had some difficulty in speaking.
‘Oh ... Bodger... I... I’m sorry’ he spluttered, ‘but the idea of an N.O. being shown round an aviary by an old lady who thinks he’s a monster . . . it’s too much!’
‘Ha bloody ha’ said The Bodger nastily. ‘It’s finished Jimmy. I shall be very surprised if he ever gets promoted now. The trouble with a thing like that is that once it starts it gets bigger and the more it goes on, the more people hear about it, the more other people hear about it and the bigger the stink gets. That little episode went on and on until everybody was heartily sick of it. And it didn’t do any good either. Jimmy is now known as the Scourge of God in the bird-fanciers’ world. That rating certainly did not get recommended for leading hand and will have the reputation of being a sea-lawyer all the time he’s in. And the First Lord was shifted to the Ministry of Agriculture. There wasn’t even an enquiry into conditions on the mess-deck. Apparently it never occurred to anyone that the fumes which gassed a bucket-bird might also do the same to human beings.’
‘Ah well,’ said the Communications Officer. ‘That’s life.’
In spite of The Bodger’s remarks about him, George Dewberry was enjoying the Mediterranean. It was providing a new and enchanting range of drinks to sample. George Dewberry sampled the local wines so fully that he was almost always drunk on shore. Many of the cadets were confused by the rush and excitement of the new places they visited; frequently their only memory of a town or port was the kind of liquor on which George Dewberry was drunk.
There was Sorrento, a town set in orange and olive trees, monastic calm and cliffs along the sea, where George Dewberry drank Orvieto; Pompeii, where Paul sported amongst buildings and statues, and George Dewberry drank Lacrima Cristi; Vesuvius, where, the funicular having been swept away by an eruption and not yet rebuilt, a guide rushed on up the mountain ahead of the cadets with bottles of vino rosso, which nobody bought at the price except George Dewberry; Capri, where the funicular broke down for half an hour and left the cadets seemingly suspended in a violet sky amongst the scents of jasmine, bougainvillea and poinsettia, and where George Dewberry took the opportunity of finishing a whole flask of Capri wine; and Naples, a city of high buildings on hills and tenements underneath, where George Dewberry drank a bottle and a half of Chianti and slept through an entire performance of ‘I Pagliacci’ (including two encores of ‘Vesti la giubba’ and one of ‘Non, Pagliacci non son’) by the San Carlo Opera Company.
A kindly providence watched over George Dewberry ashore. He was never robbed, nor did he ever lose the way back to some other cadets, nor did he ever fall and hurt himself. Only once was he in the hands of the police.
In Sorrento, George Dewberry was found sitting by himself on a seat late at night trying to sing the soprano part of ‘Bella Figlia.’ Two men in uniform lifted him to his feet and started walking him back to the ship. As soon as he understood what was happening to him, George Dewberry thrust them away.
‘Take your hands off me’ he said. ‘You can’t do this to me. I’m a British citishen. Take your hands off me this minute or I’ll call the Carabinieri.’
‘We are the Carabinieri’ said the larger of the two men.
9
In Malta, George Cross, Barsetshire found a stronghold of the Royal Navy. The Army and the Royal Air Force had footholds which grew stronger every year but the life of the island still revolved around the comings and goings of the ships and her pulse was controlled by their movements; her purse also, depended to a large extent upon the tributes of the sailor. It was a Mediterranean island overlaid with a veneer of England which showed itself in the menus, in the newspapers, and in the lighter complexions of many of its children. It was an island of tiny walled fields, green in summer and brown in the winter; towns of small houses and huge yellow churches whose towers had two clocks, one showing the wrong time to confuse the Devil on the times of the services; church bells in the early morning and heat off the walls in the early evening; narrow straight streets with a glimpse of the sea at their endings; purple Melita wine; red and yellow and green dghaisas in Grand Harbour; small bars with shade curtains; blue water offshore; carved sacred figures in wall niches; festivals of banners and processions in the streets; and Holy Pictures in the public transport vehicles, where old ladies crossed themselves, putting their souls in the keeping of the Virgin Mary before trusting their bodies to the care of a Maltese driver.
The ship was specially cleaned for Malta. Although she had just been painted, there still remained odd corners which needed touching up and the Commander spent his day striding about the upper deck, followed by his Doggie, pointing them out. Pontius the Pilot was seen on deck for an unprecedented length of-time, Petty Officer Moody grew almost loquacious under the strain, while Able Seaman Froggins’s marauding forays were more frequent and met with stiffer opposition until the day came when Able Seaman Froggins recognised some of his own property in another part of the ship, newly painted and with his own initials erased. When that happened, everyone in the division realised that the heat was on.
Malta was the climax of the Mediterranean cruise, the ship’s presentation at Court, and for it she was scrubbed and cleaned and polished as never before until she looked, as the Communications Officer said, like new Jerusalem, a bride adorned for her husband.
Mr Piles and his orchestra fired a gun salute to the Commander-in-Chief as Barsetshire entered Grand Harbour, Valletta. There were no mishaps during the salute, the saluting gun’s crews perhaps being inspired by their surroundings, the massive bastions of Ricasoli and St. Angelo and the tiers of tawny-yellow buildings on each side rising to the skyline in pinnacles, spires, turrets and balconies. Barsetshire secured at the flagship’s buoy near Customs House Steps under the critical eyes of the Mediterranean Fleet, gathered for the Fleet Regatta.
As soon as Barsetshire had secured, the Captain began his round of official calls and every official call was returned. Barsetshire received the Commander-in-Chief, the Flag Officer, Second in Command, the Flag Officer, Malta, the Flag Officer, Flotillas, the Governor, the A.O.C. and G.O.C Malta, and calls from innumerable captains of ships, commanding officers of regiments and dignitaries of the Maltese government.
‘Here they come!’ said The Bodger, looking through the wardroom scuttle on the morning of the first day, ‘all the admirals and their secretaries and their assistant secretaries and their secretaries’ secretaries unto the seventh generation.’
‘It’s like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan,’ said the Communications Officer. ‘On every side field-marshals gleamed, small beer were lords-lieutenant deemed, with admirals the ocean teemed . . . Pom tiddley
om.’
‘Hope we don’t run out of gin.’
‘Ask the P.M.O. He’s the wine queen.’
‘Where if the P.M.O.?’
‘In his cabin. Got the dog.’
‘Have you fellows thought about the Regatta?’ asked the Gunnery Officer.
‘Thought about it?’ said The Bodger. ‘One doesn’t think about Regattas, one forgets about Regattas. The sailing should be pretty safe. We’ve got young Bowles.’
‘But what about the pulling?’
‘We’ve got you for that, Guns.’
‘Me?’
‘Haven’t you got the buzz? You’re in the wardroom boat. Bow.’
‘But that’s impossible!’
‘Not at all. Dickie asked me had we got a crew and I said we’d got you and Pontius and Chris and Mr Piles would cox.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m stroke.’
‘Ye gods!’
The Regatta held a peculiar position in the affections of the Fleet. Boat-pulling had very little place in the Fleet except as physical training and excited little interest except on one or two days in the year, Regatta Days, when it became the outlet for all surplus energy and the subject of every conversation. Although its detractors said that boat-pulling was only an archaic survival from the Navy of long ago, a ship could romp through her football matches, win all her cricket fixtures, and defeat all comers at the Fleet Athletic Meeting, but only if she won the Regatta was she entitled to call herself Cock Ship.
In Barsetshire the Regatta passed through the stage of being a ship’s activity and rose to the height of a frenzy. It was an event which aroused fanatical enthusiasm in any ship but in the Cadet Training Cruiser it reached the plane of a religious mania. Barsetshire prepared to enjoy the Regatta as a dervish enjoys thrusting knives through his own flesh, approaching a state of exaltation through self-mortification.
The crews were arbitrarily selected by the Chief G.I. in the same way as he selected cadets for other duties. Cadets who found the rare button coloured red and numbered thirty beside their names were plunged into a rigorous training schedule. They pulled a mile in a boat twice a day, did P.T. in the afternoons, and were personally sighted in their hammocks by the Duty Cadet Instructor at nine o’clock every evening. They were encouraged to eat more and discouraged from going ashore. Their only consolation lay in seeing that those who were not in the Regatta crews were just as busy doing evolutions.