Good Enough For Nelson

by John Winton

  So this was Black Sebastian’s son. That dreaded figure was now represented by a very thin young man, not much more than five foot six tall, who was constantly in trouble for slack doubling. That terrible man had delivered up a hostage to the Navy, a boy with black hair like his father, but who looked as though he was not getting enough sleep.

  ‘Did your father suggest you joined the Navy?’ It was the old cliché. The uncertain son press-ganged into the Navy to carry on the name.

  ‘Oh not at all, sir! My father was not too keen on me joining. Nor was my mother, sir. It was all my idea, sir.’

  ‘And are you enjoying it, now you are here?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir, very much!’

  He said yes, but his eyes said no. His eyes said, I volunteered for this, and I would rather die than admit I made a mistake, least of all to my father. Persimmons, The Bodger could see, would have to resolve his problems by himself. The Bodger understood his dilemma. He would be miserable if he stayed. If he left, he would make himself miserable with accusations of failure and feelings of guilt.

  ‘OK Persimmons, double off then.’

  When The Bodger got back for breakfast, Julia was already sitting at table, surrounded by letters and newspapers and looking, as always, as though she expected great things of the day.

  ‘Gee,’ said The Bodger, ‘you sure are lookin’ sharp this morning.’

  ‘It’s this place,’ said Julia. ‘Everybody’s so on their toes. I get the feeling I ought to be the same. But I see I’m going to have to make some changes around these parts.’

  ‘Me too,’ said The Bodger.

  ‘There are always more problems after taking over from a man living on his own. What a pity Jimmy ever separated from Meryll. As it is, the stewards have been allowed to get some very funny ideas of their own. I know Purvis served with you in the old whatever it was, but he’s going to have to change one or two things. I’m going to have to try and bring certain people round to my way of thinking.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Jimmy seems to have had such a peculiar order of priorities. He and Purvis seem to have been horse-mad. The Sporting Life and the Sporting Chronicle were delivered religiously until I stopped them, but the dish-washer is out of action and Purvis tells me it has been for the last five weeks. Obviously, I’m going to have to change the order of priorities here.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I must say I’m wondering what sort of job it’s going to turn out to be.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I have to admit I’m slightly terrified by it all.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Oh do stop saying that,’ said Julia sharply. ‘You know what I mean. Am I to be one of the girls, hobbing and nobbing with everybody, or is it going to be a touch of the old colonel’s lady? I don’t know who to ask. I’ve just looked through the Baby List and there isn’t a single name on it I recognise.’

  ‘The what list?’

  ‘Baby List. It’s a sort of Navy List for wives and families, I suppose you could call it.’

  ‘Is that it there? Let’s have a look.’

  The Baby List was several typed sheets, stapled together, which gave the name and Christian name of every officer and lecturer, also his wife’s Christian name, their address and telephone number, and the names, ages and sexes of all their children. It was, as The Bodger could readily see, a most valuable document, containing a great deal of information, all carefully tabulated for easy reference, which The Bodger and Julia in their position would otherwise have had to ferret out for themselves.

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ said The Bodger. ‘The PMO’s got seven children. There’s Ruth, nineteen, Robert, fifteen, Rachel, thirteen, Richard, eight, Rosemary, seven, Roger, five, and Jane, four. Jane. Obviously they ran out of names beginning with R after seven. That’s girl boy girl boy girl boy girl. I wonder what the mathematical odds are against that happening? I must get old Seamus Rothesay to work it out for me sometime.’

  ‘I wonder how his wife manages,’ said Julia. ‘Eight, seven, five and four. The others might be away at boarding school but those four are at home, bound to be. She must be driven round the bend, run off her feet, poor woman. What’s her name?’

  ‘Her name’s Ruth, too. I suppose the children represent the different appointments he has had. Jobs ashore and at sea. Hence the timing. It might even affect the sex of the children. Did you know there was a theory that if you had a sea job you were more likely to have a girl? I know when I was in my last submarine there was a theory that in a running boat with lots of snorkelling you always had girls.’

  ‘Oh rubbish. There’s a postcard here from your god-daughter Lucy.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. She wants me to act as referee for her visa to go to Katmandu.’

  ‘No, she wants to come and stay with us for a bit, after her exams are over.’

  ‘Lucy! Lucy at the Britannia Royal Naval College! Lucy at the fount of imperialism! Lucy here, amongst all the running mad dogs of fascism and the ….’

  ‘Don’t go on about it, Robert darling, I’ve got your point.’

  ‘... All the capitalist lackeys and reactionary paper tigers? Cor, she must be softening! ‘

  ‘So shall I write and tell her she can come?’

  ‘Of course she can come. Provided she brings her bra and leaves her joss-sticks behind. I can just see Lucy appearing topless at Lord High Admiral’s Divisions, chanting about Zen Buddhism and transcendental meditation or whatever. Curiously precise hand-writing she’s got for such an anarchic sort of person. Her writing doesn’t match up to her public image at all. Anyway, talking of divisions, I must be off.’

  The relative importance of each divisions at Dartmouth, the gravity of each occasion and the size and composition of the parade, were graded like ecclesiastical ceremonies, according to a scale of ever-increasing solemnity and ritual difficulty. Morning Prayers, said every morning on the parade ground, was a comparatively minor function. There was certainly a parade but it was not, as Mr Spicer would have put it, proper divisions. But twice a week there were proper divisions, with a guard, but no band, and the divisions dressed in their seamen’s jerseys and serge trousers. Once a week, generally on Wednesdays, there were Proper Divisions, Captain’s Divisions, at which the Captain of the College took a formal salute, with a guard, and a band, and a colour party, and divisions wearing their best Number One uniforms. Occasionally, during the term, there would be special divisions for visiting dignitaries, and once, at the end of term, there was Lord High Admiral’s Divisions, above which, as The Bodger himself said, there was nothing but Lord God Almighty’s Divisions.

  Divisions that morning were Captain’s Divisions and they were, as always, both a bore and a thrill to those watching and those taking part. They went on for far too long, and yet they seemed to be all over in a flash. The band played the same old music which still sounded freshly appropriate. Some of the marching was depressingly inexpert, and yet the sight of the marchers as a whole lifted a spectator’s heart. Mr Spicer and the Chief Parade GI stood at opposite ends of the parade ground, communicating by means of a kind of subcultural running commentary, like mastodon barking, grunting, and calling to mastodon, across a vast primeval deep. At the saluting base, The Bodger himself felt again that extraordinary mixture of emotions, the reluctant pride he had first felt as a cadet on his first divisions, with that first heady sense of responsibility and fulfilment he had experienced, as a chief cadet captain, when he had first reported divisions correct to the Commander.

  When the last divisions had wheeled rather stragglingly around the flagstaff, when the band had marched away to the fading strains of ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’, when Mr Spicer and the Parade GI had both saluted and stumped off, and when all the attending divisional and staff officers had saluted and fallen out, The Bodger was left on the parapet with the Commander. The Commander, Executive Officer of the College, and The Bodger’s second in command, was a Gunnery Officer and The Bodger, as
a submariner, always felt residually uneasy in the company of Gunnery Officers, whatever their seniority. As the old saying had it, Gunnery Officers became Gunnery Officers because they would never then have to serve with another Gunnery Officer. Jerry Braithwaite, the College Commander, was every inch a Gunnery Officer: the peak and brim of his cap, the top straight edge of his nose, the jut of his chin, the cut of his lapels, the slope of his telescope, the creases of his trousers, the distance apart of his boot-caps when he stood at attention, all formed a pattern of angles and lines which proclaimed his specialisation.

  But just now Jerry’s brow was stern and his lips compressed and he shifted his telescope ominously under his armpit, as though only just restraining himself from jumping forward and braining some slovenly passing OUT with it.

  ‘Something wrong, Jerry?’ The Bodger asked sympathetically, though superfluously.

  ‘Everything wrong, sir.’

  For a few moments, The Bodger gazed compassionately at the sight of a Gunnery Officer in anguish.

  ‘You mean... some of those divisions marching past just now?’

  Jerry screwed up his face, so that deep furrows appeared around his eyes. His shoulders hunched and his lower lip turned down dismally. He looked exactly like a man subjected to steady relentless pressure on a sore tooth.

  ‘I’m going to have to bear down harder on Spicer and the Chief, sir. We’ve got one or two big occasions coming up this term, quite apart from Lord High Admiral’s later on. In a few weeks time, we’ve got the Great Gromboolian Walkabout. If they saw the exhibition we had this morning, they’ll send all their bods to China or somewhere.’

  Jerry stared moodily down at the parade ground, like a general studying the terrain where his armies had suffered a crushing defeat. ‘Actually, to be honest, sir, these aren’t all that bad, for this stage of the term. I keep thinking they’re the worst we’ve ever had, and Spicer and Co. keep telling them that, but I suppose they’re really just about average. After all, we have to make allowances for the fact that half the OUTs here have only just come down out of the trees from their universities, and hardly know their right from left. I shall have to use a bit of the old iron fist in the velvet glove technique. Try that for a bit. But from experience, the only technique that really works in this place is the iron fist in the equally iron glove.’

  Leaving Jerry to his meditations, The Bodger walked up the main College entrance steps, across the main corridor and up the right hand flight of steps towards his office. It was a double flight of steps and The Bodger walked up the right or left flight alternately, every other day. It was typical of the College that which day it was, right or left, was carefully noted down by the hall-porter, and The Bodger frequently broke the sequence on purpose just to annoy him. But today was a right- hand flight day and The Bodger walked steadily upwards, ready to concede that his stately progress was arguably ludicrous.

  The Captain’s personal office was off a broad landing on the first floor, where both flights of steps came together. The landing had a solemn, heavily marbled presence, and the office was a sombre room, sombrely decorated and sombrely furnished, and on the walls were sombre Victorian photographs of a number of sombre Victorian royal personages, visiting the College or performing as naval cadets on the Dart.

  Polly was arranging some flowers in an old brass cartridge case on The Bodger’s desk.

  ‘That’s very nice, Polly. Where’s Scratch this morning?’

  ‘Good morning, sir. He’s gone to the start of Hawke Division cross country route march, sir.’

  ‘Route march!’ marvelled The Bodger. ‘But that’s terribly sportif for a Captain’s Secretary!’

  ‘He’s affiliated to Hawke Division, sir, and he just thought he’d put in an appearance, sir, to see them off. So he asked me to look out for him, sir, and make his apologies and to say that he’ll be back in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Cor,’ said The Bodger. There must indeed, as Julia said, be something in the air of this place. The Captain’s Secretary, attending early morning exercises at break of day and now ‘putting in an appearance’ at a cross country route march? Whatever next?

  ‘OK Polly, so what have we got on today?’

  Polly took up her pad and flipped the pages over to the correct place. ‘Well, sir, there’s your lecture on leadership to all officers under training in the Parker Hall at eleven hundred, sir, HMS Rowbotham comes into harbour at twelve hundred, sir. Also at twelve, there’s the Dartmouth Women’s Institute sponsored walk for the disabled children of Zambia. The Zambian Consul in Dartmouth is going, and some of the wives from the College will also be there. Lunch with the men from the Ministry of Political Warfare, sir, about the site for the new squash courts and the enlarged Western Command fall-out shelter and regional command post. The Dartmouth Happy Band of Nautical Pilgrims are having a bring-and-buy sale in aid of the Tobermory Spanish Galleon Recovery Fund. In town and around, the Mayor and councillors of Dartmouth and local town dignitaries will be holding their summer bound-beating ceremony and annual expulsion of the Wicked Witch Henny Henny from the harbour. This afternoon there’s an open-air performance of Strindberg’s Dance of Death by the Dartmouth Precious Festival Players, sir, that’s a special theatre workshop group of the DADS, the Dartmouth Amateur Dramatic Society, known as the Mums and Dads, sponsored by the Arts Council...’

  Polly really was the most delicious-looking girl. The Bodger wondered whether she had a boy-friend. Or rather, not whether, but how many.

  ‘... Later this afternoon, sir, there’s the start of the Round Fastnet Single-Handed Trimaran Race for Special Duties officers, then weekly rounds of the ship’s company’s senior rates bar, restaurant complex, swimming pool, charcoal barbecue-rama, sauna bath, laundromat and automated discotheque, sir. This evening, there’s the Dartmouth and District Anti-Noise and Pollution League’s AGM, followed by their annual ear-plugging and hot-pot supper, sir. Captain Forster-Jones never used to go that, sir.’

  ‘Tell me, Polly, did Jimmy Forster-Jones go to any of these things?’

  ‘Well sir, not actually go, no, sir.’

  ‘Did he send a representative?’

  ‘Well no, sir, not actually send a representative.’

  ‘Well what did he do then?’

  ‘Well, sir, he just sort of generally wished them well, sir, in a kind of general way, sir.’

  ‘I think we can do better than just wishing people well. We can turn up ...’

  ‘You mean you’d like me to accept all these, sir ...?’

  ‘Good God no. Not me. The midshipmen can go. They’ll have to do that sort of thing thousands of times in their Service careers, they might as well start now.’ The Bodger took out his copy of the Blue List, which was a little printed book with a blue cover, in which were the names of all the officers and lecturers and all the officers under training, currently at Dartmouth, at sea, or at university. ‘Here we are... Aaron, Abdulabia, Acland, Adrianovitch, Anson, and so on. Aaron, W., he can go to the Zambian disabled sponsored walk thing. Abdulabia can go to the bring and buy sale. Tell him he’ll have to bring something and buy something. Acland can represent me at the bound-beating. Adrianovitch can go to the Strindberg. With a name like that he should be amongst friends. And so on, throughout all the engagements, throughout the whole term. Got the idea?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Now, if it’s something really and obviously important, then I rely on you and Scratch to tell me and I’ll either go or be represented, or Julia might go, if it’s that sort of do.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right, who’s first this morning?’

  ‘The Prof., sir. I mean, the Senior Tutor, sir.’

  ‘Ah.’

  There was an old saying that there were only two subjects of conversation at Dartmouth. One was the training of officers. The other was officers’ training. The Bodger knew that the Prof. had been biding his time, waiting for his opportunity, to address himself to these two subject
s.

  The Prof.’s famous stammer practically disappeared in private conversation, and The Bodger had the unworthy thought that perhaps it, too, was all part of the Prof.’s planned decrepitude. But though he spoke with such rejuvenated fluency, it still took some time for the Prof. to come to the point.

  ‘To cut a long story short, Bodger,’ said the Prof., inaccurately, at last, ‘it’s the syllabus I’m driving at. There has been a steady but insidious shift of emphases during your predecessor’s time here, and in his predecessor’s time, and especially the one before him, who was a particularly God-forsaken gunnery officer. What I’m saying is that there has been a marked trend in this College away from the intellectual and towards the purely muscular. I agree that the accent here has always tended to be on beef. Dartmouth has always been a physical sort of place, where young men pit their strengths against each other, with official encouragement. But there is a physical frenzy about the place now which has gone beyond anything I’ve known in the past. In a way it’s a return to the mentality of the days of sail. It’s as though people have been prevented from actually going back to the days of masts and sails, so they compensate by indulging in the sort of thinking which properly belongs in the age of sail. It’s a return to the days when an officer who was as agile aloft as his topmen was, by definition, a good officer, and an officer who could get his sailors to lift large weights and haul heavy loads faster than any other ships’ sailors and without rupturing too many of themselves was b-bound to be a success in the Service. I see this deterioration, these shifts of emphases, all around. I can’t believe it is for the best. The Navy must still be a service for the thinking man.’

  ‘So what do you suggest, Prof.?’

  ‘I suggest a change of emphasis, or rather, a deepening of certain specific emphases ....’

  The Bodger waited, with some patience. The Prof. was likely to go on like this for some time.

  ‘We could revive the debating society. We haven’t sent a party of officers under training to a concert or play for years. The dramatic society regularly used to take part and win the Command dramatic competitions. The other night as I was passing I heard a whole mob of them caterwauling Gilbert and Sullivan! I ask you! We haven’t had a gold medal winner for an essay here for donkey’s years, nor a member of Mensa. The chess club has been allowed to lapse, at one time we had several games going on by correspondence with people all over the world. We could add some projects with more intellectual content to the things they do in vacations, instead of this everlasting preoccupation with shinning up cliffs, and sailing to Patagonia and cycling across country and hitch-hiking to Norway, and all that.’