Good Enough For Nelson

by John Winton

  ‘That’s the number of different kinds of flower or plant used in the decoration,’ he explained. ‘The record is seventy-four, held by the wife of the last College padre but one. The other wives were convinced she was a witch, and grew henbane in her backyard at the full moon and all that.’

  The Bodger stared again at the decorated pillar, aghast at the amount of toil and ambition and frustration it represented.

  ‘The College has these crazes occasionally,’ Jimmy was saying. ‘I expect they had them when you were last here. You’re never quite sure what form they’re going to take. Last term, it was bog paper. All the officers under training competed to see how much they could use. At a sitting, so to speak. Our College consumption went up by several thousand thousand per cent. We’re still getting hurt and baffled letters from Naval Stores about it. Apparently they’re going to have to grow a special forest up in Saskatchewan somewhere, just to keep up with the BRNC’s consumption of loo paper.’

  They were walking along the corridor of the main building, when The Bodger heard a shriek of ‘Mind yer backs, please sir!’ behind him. He stood aside, just in time, as an electric floor-polishing machine hurtled past him, its motor wailing mournfully. An aged naval pensioner, in blue uniform and brass buttons, was running behind it, or rather being dragged along by it, with his white locks flying, his rheumy eye staring, and the sweat standing out on his venerable brow. He looked like the Ancient Mariner hijacked by a runaway speed-boat.

  The Bodger had quite forgotten the Dartmouth corridors. They were very wide, and very shiny, and very long. They seemed to go on for ever, taking different levels on different floors, as though on different planes of existence, and their wooden decks were polished most mornings by flying squadrons of pensioners with polishers such as the one which had nearly run them down. The Bodger stared down the long, long, corridor in front of him. Running figures suddenly crossed it, at the far end. The sound of many clattering footsteps echoed back towards him. These corridors were a part of The Bodger’s own boyhood. At thirteen he had had to double along them many times a day, with the fear of being late for a parade, or a class, or a game, or a muster, for ever treading like a fiend on his heels.

  The corridor bulkheads were almost entirely lined with photographs, the great majority of them the term photographs of Dartmouth cadets, dating back many years. There they were, all of them the Navy of the future in their own day and generation, standing in rows on the College steps, their young faces screwed up against the sun or braced against the winter wind above their stiff collars and white lanyards. In front were their instructors and divisional officers and chief petty officers, with the current Captain of the College invariably sitting in the centre. The pictures were all framed and glassed and captioned, with everyone’s name there. Taken together, they were in their own way a priceless record of twentieth-century naval history.

  The Bodger knew his own term of old and stopped in front of their photograph. He picked himself out at once, grinning, towards the right-hand end of the third row. There was old Corky, their term officer. Oddly enough, he had never risen above the rank of lieutenant commander he had had in the picture. Something must have gone badly wrong, for The Bodger remembered Corky with respect and affection and gratitude for all the advice he had given and the trouble he had taken with his cadets. Beside The Bodger was Dickie Vanbrugh, killed in a Liberator crash at Tripoli in 1943. On the other side was a boy called Fenton. The Bodger could remember no more about him than that he had killed himself in a motor cycle accident while they were doing their sub-lieutenant’s course at Greenwich. Further along was Eric. The Bodger could not for the moment recall his surname and looked at the tally below. Eric Glossop. He had been invalided from the Service after crushing his hand in a fall-block whilst hoisting a sea-boat.

  The Bodger looked over the faces, pleased and gratified to see how many he could still put a name to. It was sometimes fashionable to claim that one could see in these young faces a reflection of their hopes and determination for the future. Not so, in The Bodger’s opinion; as he remembered it, they had all been waiting to go for lunch. Although, there were now no survivors from those of his term who had joined the Fleet Air Arm, he was still mildly surprised to see how few had otherwise come to a premature death, and how few had ever achieved any startling destiny. Those still serving were, of course, now very much in the minority. The rest had just served, and then gone. It was not the brightest, or the most memorable, or the gayest, or the wittiest, or even the most professionally competent, who had risen in the Service. The best of all in their term, in The Bodger’s opinion, had retired early to become a probation officer. Those who were still there were those, like The Bodger himself, with a talent for survival and perhaps, he thought, they were the best for the Navy in the end. The Navy did not really want clever, or witty, or talented, or even competent men. In the last resort, the Navy just wanted those who were willing to go on with it, come what may.

  There were voices raised from the junior officers’ wardroom, which was up a short flight of steps at the end of the corridor.

  ‘We’ll go and have a look at this,’ said Jimmy.

  At the table nearest the door, a place had been laid, complete with cutlery for a six course meal, wine glasses, napkin, finger bowl, and table mat. Round the end of the table were gathered about a dozen Gromboolians, their dark faces wondering at the significances of this latest manifestation of the white sahib’s taboo ground.

  Jimmy introduced the officer in charge of the class. ‘Mr Spicer, Bodger, the Cadet Gunner and Parade Ground Officer.’

  The Bodger shook hands. ‘Have we met before, Mr Spicer?’

  ‘No, sir. But I know of you by repute, sir.’

  That, The Bodger reflected, could be a somewhat left-handed compliment.

  ‘What’s happening here?’

  ‘Knife and fork drill, sir. Lecture on correct mess procedure, sir, correct use of mess utensils, and general mess etiquette, sir.’

  ‘Ah. Carry on, please.’

  Spicer was a large man, with the right amount of hair in his nostrils and sprouting out of his ears to be a gunnery officer. But there was something about his manner which The Bodger found vaguely disappointing. The man was too innocuous. A Cadet Gunner and Parade Ground Officer was a personage of awe and majesty, pavilioned in splendour and girded with gaiters, who made his habitation at the far end of the parade ground, in that place of menace out of sight whence all those waves of thunderous sound were coming. This man was ... The Bodger searched for the word … too cosy, even cuddly.

  This was not Attila the Hun, but Santa Claus.

  Spicer’s lecture was delivered in a high-pitched, cockney voice and was clearly word-perfect, rehearsed to the last nuance, with every practised gesture made with superb élan. At the far end of the wardroom, listening behind the panels, The Bodger could see the shadowy figures of a group of stewards. Spicer’s lecture was obviously a party piece.

  ‘Now pay attention this way. Knife and fork drill. Or, in uvver words, general mess etiquette. Or, in uwer words, ‘ow to conduct yourselves at table so you won’t disgrace the Andrew or the muwers wot bore you. We can’t ‘ave awficers and gentlemen in Her Majesty’s Navy eating peas orf of their knives, can we, and anybody ‘oo has actually managed to eat his peas orf of his knife is a better man than I am Gunga Din.’ Expressions of faint concern and bewilderment fleeted across the watching Gromboolian countenances.

  ‘The first item of dining equipment to take cognisance of is the table mat, known in the PO’s mess as the doily. This is put down where it is so every awficer knows where to sit and there’s no unseemly rush and he don’t get himself mixed up with anybody else. The eating utensils are mustered on either side of the table mat, in the order in which they will be used. Starting from the outside and working inwards, that is from right to left on the right hand side and from left inwards to right on the left hand side and remembering as they say in the old joke only don’t
let me ‘ear any of you laugh that the bottle-opener always goes on the right. Where a course normally only requires one eating utensil, that is to say for a for instance soup which normally only requires one implement, to wit, one spoon, that spoon will be found dressed on the right side of the table mat with no corresponding utensil on the left. But the next course, say, will be some kind of fish, then there will be a fish knife on the right and a fish fork on the left. And so on, with eating utensils for meat, pudding, savoury ...’

  At last, one of the Gromboolians stirred. ‘Excuse me, sir, but what if you are left-handed?’

  ‘I thought somebody would ask that, I was waiting for somebody to ask that, somebody always asks that. Makes no difference, right- or left-handed. Because there are no left-handed men in the Navy. We don’t have left-handed rifles we don’t salute left-handed you don’t slope arms left-handed you don’t button your reefer jacket from right to left like the Wrens just because you’re left-handed, do you? We don’t have left-handed binoculars left-handed oars left-handed gunsights left-’anded ships. Everybody in the Navy is right-handed. So any of you ‘oo ‘as got the mistaken idea that he is left-handed should take my advice and decide that he is right-handed. I won’t say that life is easier in the Navy if you’re right-handed I’ll only say that life is bloody impossible if you’re left-handed. So ‘eed the gypsy’s warning.’

  The Gromboolians looked at each other, as though it were Swahili to the Asians, and Urdu to the Africans, and Greek to all of them.

  ‘When you sit down at table, you first pick up your napkin. It’s called a napkin, not a serviette, or anything else. It’s a napkin. And you don’t tuck it in under your chin when you eat. The Captain can and may in the sacred privacy of ‘is cuddy, but yew will place your napkin across your lap. So.’

  Spicer sat down at the place, flicked out the folded napkin, and spread it with tremendous panache across his lap. ‘So. Note, that I do not place my elbows on the table but keep them smartly to my sides. If I need something from the table I do not reach across and grab it like King Kong’s younger bruvver. I ask my neighbour on the appropriate side politely if he would mind passing the salt and pepper, or whatever. Not the cruet. You ask for the cruet and they’ll think you’re talking about the ‘Oly Communion, or something.

  ‘Now, there’s three kinds of meal in the wardroom. There’s ‘ot. There’s cold. And there’s Sunday evening buffet supper and cinema...’

  Jimmy caught The Bodger’s eye and jerked his head towards the door. As he was going, The Bodger looked back. Spicer was drinking imaginary soup from a real spoon, and chatting amicably with an imaginary partner on his right. The Gromboolians were still regarding him with sombre, intent gaze, but whether in disbelief or resignation it was impossible from their expressions to tell.

  ‘Jimmy, I don’t remember this sort of thing going on when I was last here?’

  ‘One of the College traditions now, Bodger. Spicer’s knife and fork drill. People come miles to see it. Played before the crowned ‘eads of Europe, and all that.’

  ‘It was always assumed that we knew this sort of thing before we came here.’

  ‘Can’t assume anything now, Bodger. You used to be able to assume that every cadet had been to a public school or at least a good grammar school, came from a reassuring middle-class background, believed in the Queen, the Empire, the flag and toasted muffins for tea. Not now. You could assume that everybody read Rudyard Kipling, said their prayers every night, washed behind their ears and believed in Father Christmas. Not now, by golly. You should hear Spicer on music, theatre or art. He does several lectures during the term.’

  ‘Music, theatre, and art?’ The Bodger shook his head. ‘The mind simply boggles.’

  ‘Now pay attention this way.’ Jimmy had a very passable imitation of Mr Spicer in full flow. ‘There’s three kinds of painting in the Navy. There’s oil. There’s water colour. And there’s what you see on the bulkheads down in the ‘eads ...’

  ‘I don’t know, Jimmy.’ The Bodger knew he must tread warily. ‘I think I may have to chop all that.’

  ‘Oh nonsense, Bodger! It’s part of the College set-up. People would be disappointed.’ Jimmy was still laughing from Spicer’s performance. ‘What’s the problem. Why would you scrub round it?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say.’ The Bodger chose his words carefully. He had no wish to offend Jimmy and, after all, he was still very much a new boy and had not even taken over Father’s Chair yet. ‘I believe for one thing it’s a little out of date ...’

  ‘Dash it, Bodger, if you’re going to change everything in this place that’s out of date ...’

  ‘... And I think it’s insulting to their intelligences. It smacks of something... I don’t know what the right word is... patrician ... paternalistic ... patronising. It would be OK as a turn at a smoking concert. Like that famous gunnery version of a church service. Verger will report graveyard cleared for service, tombstones upright, hymn number tally reading correct, font full, crypt bilges checked dry, you know the sort of thing.’ In The Bodger’s opinion, Spicer’s lecture was almost a parody of itself. It tended to devalue the rest of the syllabus. Now he thought more about it, The Bodger was not even sure of Petty Officer Pounter’s performance. Drill was one thing. A prima donna exhibition by the GI, with the whole College looking on and applauding his jokes, was quite another.

  ‘It would be more to the point these days,’ said The Bodger, ‘if he gave them a lecture on how to appear to advantage on television.’

  Jimmy Forster-Jones had given another great guffaw, before he realised that The Bodger was serious.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘you’re obviously going to be a new broom, Bodger.’

  Almost by accident, they came around a corner and found the College Sports Office, where the Sports Officer, a young Royal Marine officer, was sitting at his desk looking across at the Assistant Sports Officer, another young Royal Marine officer. By the window stood a young Chief PTI. All three young men were glowing with astounding health and fitness, their eyes clear, their hair crisply curled, their teeth shining. When they saw The Bodger and Jimmy, Bungey One and Bungey Two, as they were called, both swung smoothly and silkily to their feet, their limbs moving as though on muscled castors sliding in oil to their new destined positions.

  While Jimmy introduced them, The Bodger could not help noticing that both Bungeys maintained a slightly worried look. It was inappropriate and unsettling that they should look like that.

  Even Jimmy noticed it. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  Both Bungeys looked helplessly at the very large notice board which the Chief PTI had been attending to when they came in. It filled the whole of one wall of the office. The Bodger had been saddened by it as soon as he saw it. Wherever he went in the Navy he now came across these elaborate state-boards, which were kept up to date by more and more senior ratings. As the Navy’s resources and options dwindled, so it compensated by expanding its state-boards. It was as though the Navy might have less and less to operate, but what it did have must be more and more carefully detailed on a state-board. Was this, The Bodger sometimes wondered in gloomy moments, how the final naval Armageddon would take place: correctly filled in on a self-destructing state-board by a kamikaze Fleet Chief?

  The Bungeys’ state-board was a particularly splendid one, much more detailed than the ordinary common or garden state-board, symbolic of the importance the College attached to physical exertion. There was a column for every day of the summer term and a line for every officer under training. There were meticulously drawn sub-divisions, and tabs of many colours, and pins of differently ornamented heads, and separate geometric symbols for different games and entry schemes and courses and seniorities and ages and games facilities and allocations, with proper indications where games fields were out of action, boats were under repair, or officers under training under medical treatment. There were symbols for bank holidays and appendicitis and gear-box changes and cholera inocula
tions. Somewhere on that board, The Bodger had no doubt Ramahdan was commemorated, together with American Independence Day, Yom Kippur, and W. G. Grace’s birthday.

  But there was something wrong with the board. It was largely uncompleted. It had dozens of symmetrical spaces, waiting to be filled in. All those empty slices of board ached to be completed with names. All those multi-coloured lozenges and dots needed the urgency of some personal destiny. This was a state-board that lacked authority. It had to be looked at with apprehension or it was nothing.

  ‘Nobody seems to be able to play any games any more, sir,’ said Bungey One, softly and mournfully, like a parson confessing there were no more candidates for confirmation. ‘Or if they do, they’re not letting on. We asked them all to fill in a form when they got here. One or two admitted they could play cricket. One bloke who went to St Paul’s said he could row a bit. The rest are all pretty non-committal, sir, except for one chap who wrote on his form that he got his exercise acting as pall-bearer for his friends who exercised. They do tend to be a bit silly like that, sir.’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have these elitist games, sir,’ said Bungey Two, bravely. ‘Maybe we should just stick to the kind of sports they’re more used to, like holding sit-ins and kicking policemen in the head.’

  ‘Now come on, Roger,’ said Bungey One, ‘just because you didn’t go to university yourself.’

  The Bodger tore himself away from the spectacle of one marine chiding another on his lack of intellectual background. ‘Elitist!’ he snorted, seizing on the word. ‘Never heard of it. But if it’s what I think you mean, we ought to have more of it. We are an elite. Let’s not be mealy-mouthed about it. If they weren’t an elite they wouldn’t be here and it’s time they realised and began to act like it. How many cadets said they could play cricket?’