Good Enough For Nelson

by John Winton

Lucy gave no sign that she had noticed him, as she rejoined the rest of the demonstrators. They were a small, sodden band of young men and girls, all soaking wet, and all looking rather alike, except for Ruth O’Malley in the rear, and a fierce-looking little lady with white hair in the front who first embraced Lucy and then shook her fists at Isaiah Nine Smith and Purple Platoon.

  ‘That was well wrestled, McAllester,’ said Isaiah Nine Smith, looking across at Lucy and the demonstrators. ‘Odd looking lot, aren’t they? You’d think they had better things to do than come out here on a day like this. Anyway, your team are doing very well, McAllester. That’s a very good rendezvous, right on time. All well in your team?’

  ‘Not quite, sir. Persimmons has sprained his ankle. I think, quite badly. I think he ought to be withdrawn, sir.’

  ‘OK, tell him to get into the chopper. Your tents and food are in there. You can get them out now. All set for the next transit?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘By the way, anybody seen anything of the Captain’s Secretary?’

  ’No, sir.’

  ‘He’s supposed to be umpiring in this part of the world.’

  Purple Platoon set off, in the rain, for the last and hardest exercise of the day, a fifteen mile triangular map-reading cross-country march, on which they were required to cover five miles an hour for three hours. Caradoc was now team-leader, and took the lead, with McAllester in fifth or sixth place in the line.

  Each team was supposed to check in with an umpire at the corners of the march triangle, but at the first rendezvous there was no sign of an umpire so Purple Platoon pressed on, setting their teeth and calling upon their last reserves of strength and fitness. Syllabub stopped moaning, Adrianovitch had no breath to spare for swearing, and even Chung Toi began to tire. Without Persimmons they could make better progress, but the rain fell harder, the terrain seemed rougher, the packs with tents and food were certainly heavier.

  When they were nearing the second rendezvous point, the mist closed in and brought down visibility to less than twenty yards. Once again, they relied upon McAllester’s map-reading and Caradoc’s bump for moorland direction. It was growing dark, on a wet dreary Dartmoor evening. Damp mist blew along at ground level. Purple Platoon’s spirits were as low as the visibility. In their extreme fatigue they fancied they could see other Roughex teams groping through the mist and hear voices, lost and calling, imploring them from either side.

  Bingley, last in the line, stopped and cocked his head. ‘It’s the funniest thing,’ he said, ‘but I heard somebody shouting just then. Hold on a minute! ‘

  The fine stopped still, gladly.

  ‘It wasn’t my imagination. I definitely heard something.’

  Bingley darted off the path, round a bluff, and there was Lucy, shouting.

  When the others came up they could see from her face that something had happened.

  ‘We’re lost,’ she said. ‘And Ruth is ill.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Just here.’ Ruth was huddled behind a low wall, her head dropping forward. ‘We somehow got separated from the others in the mist. Ruth fell down and now she says she can’t go on. She’s very cold.’

  Caradoc bent down to look at Ruth’s white face. ‘Gosh, this is no good,’ he said. ‘She not wearing the proper clothes for this sort of weather. This always happens. People’s body temperature goes right down, and they get really cold, deep down in the heart’s core. Get your blankets out, men. If we don’t do something quick, she’ll die.’

  While the rain still fell, Purple Platoon took off their haversacks, and pulled out their groundsheets and blankets.

  ‘Get down.’ Caradoc jerked his thumb at Lucy. ‘Lie down in the blankets with her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get down, woman. Put your arms around her and start keeping her warm. We’ll wrap you both up. Give her a cuddle. If you don’t, I bloody well will! ‘

  Lucy quickly got down and Purple Platoon wrapped both girls in blankets and groundsheets.

  ‘We’ll put up one of our tents over you.’

  ‘Eeey, that’s looks nice,’ said Bingley wistfully. ‘I could just do with a bit of cuddling myself.’

  ‘Same here,’ said Caradoc. The whole of Purple Platoon agreed that cuddling indeed would be nice.

  ‘If only this bloody thing...’ McAllester kicked Syllabub’s radio set viciously, and it gave an outraged squawk. ‘Crikey, I think it’s working, we should have kicked it long ago. Here you are, Syllabub, your big moment. Get on to them and tell them what’s happened. I’ll give you a map reference of where I think we are. Ask them to send out the chopper and pick Ruth up.’

  They put up the other two tents, and sat in them, smoking and talking. The Roughex could mark time for the moment. Adrianovitch began to sing ‘A British tar is a soaring soul’. Bingley managed to get a fire going, while they were waiting. It smoked abominably, but it cheered them all up enormously.

  ‘To get a fire going in this weather,’ said Caradoc. ‘You must have been the best bloody boy scout in the whole bloody world, man!’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Bingley, modestly. ‘There’s always dry material around if you look, down holes, in rabbit scrapings, under gorse bushes, it needs to be very wet for everything to be wet.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Caradoc.

  McAllester was sitting in the door of the girls’ tent when he heard the helicopter.

  ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘The system’s working!’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ said Lucy, sitting up from the blankets and looking out.

  ‘A bit. You might like to know that’s the same helicopter coming to pick Ruth up that you and your chums were trying to wave off.’

  ‘All right, don’t rub it in. But if you hadn’t been playing your games here on the moor we wouldn’t have been here either, and Ruth wouldn’t have been ill.’

  When the helicopter landed, Isaiah Nine Smith got out. ‘Who’s that man in the helmet who keeps on getting out of the helicopter?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘That’s Commander (T). The chap in charge of all our training.’

  ‘Rather dashing. What’s his name?’

  ‘Isaiah Nine Smith.’

  ‘What a very odd name.’

  ‘Ike to his friends, of whom I am not one.’

  Still wrapped in blankets and ground-sheet, Ruth was put on a stretcher and loaded into the helicopter.

  ‘You’d better go, too,’ Isaiah Nine Smith said to Lucy. She had a wet and stained blanket round her shoulders. Her face was muddy and her hair hung down in streaming wet strings. He was in flying overalls, and his bright yellow flying helmet had ‘Commander T’ printed on it in crisp black lettering. ‘Better see your friend into hospital.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Lucy and got into the helicopter.

  ‘Exercise is cancelled from now,’ Isaiah Nine Smith said to McAllester. Purple Platoon cheered quietly. ‘This rain is a bit too much. If you drop down a quarter of a mile from here, you’ll hit the Okehampton road. There’ll be a lorry to pick you up in the next half an hour or so.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Purple Platoon, saluting.

  ‘Anybody seen anything of the Captain’s Secretary?’

  CHAPTER VII

  On Monday morning, the Captain’s Secretary was still missing.

  ‘He’s not too good, sir,’ Polly explained. ‘His wife phoned in a couple of minutes ago, sir. He’s still in bed suffering from exposure, sir.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ The Bodger blinked. ‘What was he exposed to?’ ‘It seems he had a very hard time on that Roughex, sir. He was umpiring apparently, and somebody took away a bridge before he could get across it and then they hauled up a rope that should have been left to help him up a cliff and then finally a helicopter flew away without waiting for him, sir. So the upshot was that he had to swim and walk and climb and generally move about much more than he expected, sir.’

  The Bodger looked hard at Polly, to see if she was laughi
ng or not. But nobody could be more expressionless than Polly when she tried; to find out what she was thinking was like playing poker with Dresden china.

  ‘Well, I keep telling Scratch he shouldn’t go in for all these strenuous things. They’re far too much like hard work for a pusser. What about the PMO’s daughter?’

  ‘She’s OK, sir. She’s coming out of hospital this afternoon.’

  ‘Good. So what have we got on today?’

  Polly looked at her pad. ‘Nine-thirty, rehearsal for divisions for the visit of the Organisation of Third World States Naval Liaison Committee on Wednesday, sir.’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ groaned The Bodger. ‘Is that upon us already? Have we got a list of who’s coming?’

  ‘Yes sir. Field Marshal Gupta, Marshal of the Air Force Khan, and Sub-Lieutenant Ahmed, of the Royal Dravidian Navy, sir...’

  ‘Sub-Lieutenant Ahmed? This is a naval visit?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And Captain D. L. Cassidy-Jones, Naval Liaison Officer to the Dravidian Naval Delegation.’

  ‘Have we got a programme for them?’

  ‘Oh yes sir, Commander T’s just circulated it. Arrive by helicopter, nine-fifteen. Witness full divisions, with guard and band. Tour of the College. Visit to the river. Visit to the helicopter flight. Witness games and outdoor activities. Watch officers under training at work and play, as they say, sir...’

  ‘It all sounds so terribly terribly worthy, and predictable, and dead dead dull. What else today, Polly?’

  ‘Britannia Beagles Puppy Show this afternoon, sir. First Eleven Cricket against Plymouth Wanderers. Dinghy sailing for the Tovey Challenge Cup. HMS Rowbotham comes into harbour, ten hundred. Town and around, Dartmouth British Legion Summer Jumble Sale for the Glorious First of June...

  ‘Rowbotham,’ said The Bodger, abstractedly. ‘Where have I heard that name before? She’s always coming into harbour. I wonder... I wonder if she could take some of us to sea on Wednesday?’

  ‘That means Tremendous Mackenzie, sir,’ said Polly, meaningfully.

  Tremendous Mackenzie was Rowbotham’s commanding officer, a lieutenant-commander long since passed over for any further promotion but still a man of uncanny power and consequence in the Service. Everybody knew Tremendous Mackenzie. He had been mate of the upper deck with The Bodger in the old Superb, and The Bodger knew that Tremendous Mackenzie was a very downy old bird indeed. One had to rise in the morning some time before the most previous lark to get the better of Tremendous Mackenzie. Having never specialised, he was the saltiest of salt-horses, but he did know how to command a small ship, having done almost nothing else for almost a quarter of a century.

  Tremendous Mackenzie lived cleverly in the interstices of the Navy’s structure. Nobody ever knew what precisely his duties were, or who exactly he was responsible to. Theoretically, he came under the Commander-in-Chief, like everybody else. In practice, he went, like the wind, where he listeth. Rowbotham, an ex-world War Two destroyer, had been fitted and refitted, converted and reconverted, rearmed and disarmed, sold to other navies and bought or traded back again, so often that it was difficult now to say what she was. Nominally, she was a training ship, and Tremendous himself was her captain and in charge of training on board. But neither he nor Rowbotham were on any bridge card, appeared in any syllabus, were mentioned in any port orders, or owed any allegiance to flotilla or squadron. They both had a kind of protective colouring which allowed them to come and go without anybody really seeing them. Now that he came to think of it, The Bodger realised that Rowbotham’s movements, either in or out of harbour, had featured in very many of Polly’s morning briefings, but he had never before taken the slightest notice of them.

  Tremendous Mackenzie had called on The Bodger, officially, in sword and medals, at the beginning of term but, The Bodger remembered, he had never actually repaid the call. It had been part of Rowbotham’s effective camouflage that The Bodger had never noticed the omission and Tremendous Mackenzie himself would have been the last man to have pointed it out.

  ‘Get on the blower, Polly. Tell Tremendous Mackenzie I’ll return his call officially this morning, at eleven o’clock, after he’s secured. In my barge. Full rig, sword and medals, the lot.’

  On his way down to the river, The Bodger noticed the parade ground milling with people, marching and counter-marching. Isaiah Nine Smith was on the saluting parapet, looking extremely harassed.

  ‘Where’s Jerry?’ The Bodger asked.

  ‘Sick on shore, sir. He got some spike or something through his foot during that Roughex.’

  What?’

  ‘He was an umpire, sir. But some idiot took away a bridge before he could get across it and then somebody hauled up a rope at Sheep Crag before he could shin up it, and then to cap it all, either me or somebody flew a helicopter off without waiting for him. He was trying to hurry across country when he got some bit of metal spiked into his foot. He thought he was going to be all right, but apparently it might go septic. So, my reward is to take charge of divisions on Wednesday, sir.’

  ‘These Roughexes seem to do more damage to the staff than the OUTs! I wonder whether we’re perhaps concentrating on the wrong things? Maybe all they do is make the strong stronger and the weak weaker.’

  ‘That’s the law of the jungle, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps, but is it what we want at the College?’

  Although Tremendous Mackenzie had had so little notice of an official call by the Captain of the College, he and his ship gave The Bodger as smart and as proper a welcome as could have been expected from a capital ship in full commission. The piping party were in their best Number One suits, as were the officers, formed up in a line to meet The Bodger. The Bodger noticed how young Tremendous Mackenzie’s officers and ship’s company looked. Tremendous himself was about twenty years older than anyone else on board. He, too, was in his best uniform, his cap flat aback on his head as always, his splendid row of medals gleaming, his sandy hair growing down in long sideboards, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘How are you, Bodger, you old boozer,’ he said engagingly. ‘I wondered whether you were going to grace us with your imperial august presence.’

  ‘It’s good to see you, too, you old tosspot,’ said The Bodger, looking about him at the shining new paintwork, the neat turks heads worked on the hand-rails and the gangway, the smooth corticene laid on the deck. ‘Goodness, you’ve got this ship looking really tiddley, haven’t you?’

  ‘Goodness had nothing to do with it, Bodger.’

  As Tremendous Mackenzie led the way, The Bodger noticed on every side evidence of his host’s consuming hobby. The sonar room was marked ‘Hounds’, and the Sonar Officer’s chair was labelled ‘Whipper-In’. The Captain’s cabin had a sign, ‘MFH’. Tremendous Mackenzie was besotted with hunting. He had two horses at livery in stables in Tavistock, and he had days out in the season with the Spooners’ or the East Dart as often as he could. His cabin walls were covered with hunting prints, photographs of dogs and hounds, and several mounted fox’s brushes. The cabin was, incidentally, the largest The Bodger had ever seen in any warship in his entire naval career. It was a colossal compartment, the size of a liner’s ballroom, and furnished to the standard of the royal apartments in Vanguard.

  ‘Ye gods!’ The Bodger whistled. ‘You do yourself all right, don’t you, Tremendous! ‘

  His host shrugged deprecatingly. ‘Circumstances, Bodger,’ he said. ‘This ship has been messed about so often, and every time seemed to make the cuddy a little bigger. After all, any fool can be uncomfortable. Gin, Bodger? Pink?’ He poured what The Bodger could see was a truly tremendous gin.

  ‘Getting fewer and fewer of us these days, Bodger. Nobody drinks pink gin any more.’

  ‘True,’ said The Bodger, ‘very true.’ He had a soft spot for Tremendous Mackenzie. He knew that if his own career had not taken some of the twists and turns it had, he himself might now very well be standing where Tremendous Mackenzie stood. ‘Good health.’

&nbs
p; ‘Indeed.’

  A beautiful liver-coloured greyhound was lying curled up in a basket beside Tremendous’s roll-topped desk. When Tremendous snapped his fingers, she uncoiled her supple body and came across to have her ears rubbed.

  ‘This is Wilhelmina, my greyhound.’

  ‘Does she race?’

  ‘Supposed to. My troops all live in hopes of pulling off a tremendous betting coup on her one day.’

  ‘Any chance of that?’

  ‘Doubt it. She’s a bag of nerves, aren’t you girl?’ Wilhelmina sneezed. ‘A race track would probably send her right round the bend. We have to keep giving her pills as it is, to stop her worrying and make her cheer up a bit. Pretty powerful pills they are, too. They’d even cheer you up, Bodger.’

  ‘Do you think I need cheering up?’

  ‘Come off it, Bodger, I’m delighted to see you, everybody always is, but you’re not as amusing as you used to be, are you, anybody can see that. There’s something on your mind, it’s written all over your familiar face. This sudden interest in my little ship, this sudden call, what’s it all leading up to?’

  ‘It’s this Great Gromboolian Walkabout on Wednesday. Could we possibly ... Could we possibly bring the whole shooting match to sea with you for the day for a few evolutions?’

  The Bodger fully realised the enormity of what he was asking. He knew that the great majority of captains would at once have shied away from the prospect of having scores of officers under training running around their ship, to say nothing of visiting dignitaries and strange Captains RN. But Tremendous Mackenzie was from a larger mould.

  ‘Of course you can. But if you do come you’ll have to do a great deal more than usual.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘We’ve got hardly any hands. Like the rest of the Navy my troops have gone quite charity sponsorship mad. Look, I’ve got a list here as long as your arm. Right now, we’ve got a ship’s pop group called the Three Rs, three of our engineer mechanics, all playing in a sponsored play-in at the Church Hall here in Dartmouth in aid of a children’s home. They get so much for every hour they belt it out. Two of my sonar watch-keepers are cycling from here to the village of Rowbotham, after which this noble ship was named. It’s a sponsored ride, where they’re getting so much money for every mile, to raise some money for handicapped children. That’s fine, that’s all right, but the village of Rowbotham happens to be in Northumberland and it’s taking them about three weeks. The last I heard was a telegram saying one of them had been hit by a lorry in Newark. As from today my chief stoker is starting a sponsored hair-cut, so much for each hair-cut. My Chief and half the radar maintenance crew are doing a sponsored paint-in, painting the railings of a home for mentally defectives. Also today, some of our engineer mechanics and the motor cutter’s crew are trundling barrels from here to Land’s End to raise money to buy a minibus for crippled children in the Black Country. At the present time, between a third and a half of my ship’s company are running, jumping, painting, cycling, paddling, blowing trombones, cutting hair, trundling barrels, doing the splits, smashing up pianos or climbing the Matterhorn in sponsored events to raise money for charity. Leukemia, cancer research, lifeboats, Sunshine Homes for Blind Babies, Christmas presents for sick children in the Congo, green spectacles for superannuated pit- ponies, you name it, we’re raising money for it. It could be, of course, but perish the unworthy thought, that none of us really have enough to do. Mind you, it has to be a cause they can see in their mind’s eye. It mustn’t be too big. Say it’s for contributions to the Sunshine Homes for Blind Babies and the sailors’ll really dig out. But ask them to help the starving millions of Asia and they’ll only say let the buggers starve.’