Good Enough For Nelson

by John Winton

  This personage, whom The College at once nicknamed Superjack, had frizzy black Afro-style hair, a red leather jerkin decorated with brass studs radiating in a design like flaming sun, tight faded blue jeans, and leather boots with high cuban heels. The Bodger had last met him when he was Torpedo Officer in the old Superb. He had retired prematurely, but voluntarily, and was now, he told The Bodger, a media advisory consultant with his own agency, on contract to the Ministry of Defence.

  ‘I advise managing directors and MPs and anyone who is likely to go on the goggle-box or who would like to be invited to go on it. Funnily enough, that includes senior army, navy and air force officers. A few of them hate any kind of personal publicity. A few adore it. But most really can’t be doing with it, but feel that they have to play along with it. They’ve seen the benefits it can bring to those who can play .the media game properly, and they hope that if they can do it right, they will unleash a shower of golden dollars. Poor dears, they really do have a crisis of identity. Imagine admirals taking lessons on how to appear best on the idiot’s lantern! Whatever next, I do hear Nelson ask!’

  Superjack gave his lecture in the Hall, with the whole College present, the Prof. sitting in frozen disapproval in the front row. He brought his own cinema projector which was set up and operated by his presentation team, who were two redheads in flowered silk pyjama suits. They moved around the Hall with a delicious rustling, leaving whiffs of haunting perfume, and the College gazed enviously on them, assuming that Superjack exercised some kind of droit de seigneur over them. Many of the College were so taken by the red-heads that they missed Superjack’s opening remarks.

  ‘... So to appear on television, you must watch television. Next time you see a politician, or a pop star or a union leader or anybody being interviewed watch what they say and how they say it, what they do and how they do it. Then try to analyse your feelings. Did he sound convincing? Was he entertaining, or interesting or informative? Or was he dull, unconvincing, or unintelligible? If so, why? And if not, why not? Because there are certain tricks of the trade.

  ‘Television rewards those who take trouble over it. It’s no good being bored with it, or off-hand with it, or snooty about it. If you want something from it, you’ve got to give something. You say it’s no part of a naval officer’s duty to appear effective on TV. I say it is. You may be able to do the Navy a power of good one day, just by giving a good TV performance.

  ‘When someone’s asking you questions, look the questioner in the eye, but not all the time. Look away while answering, but make sure you are once more looking directly at him when you reach the end of your answer. So that it will appear that you have said your piece honestly and fully. It doesn’t really matter what you actually say, it’s what you appear to be saying that’s important.

  ‘Remember that, basically, TV producers don’t really like the Navy or any of the armed services. Deep down, they feel guilty about them, because they were too young to do National Service themselves. This gives an extra edge to their approach to the forces. You have to remember that BBC TV producers all had to endure those boring stories about what their daddies did at Dunkirk or in the Western Desert.’

  Listening, it struck The Bodger that perhaps Superjack, too, had a certain edge in his approach.

  ‘Some interviewers have a trick of escalating the difficulty of successive questions. Like taking a horse round a show-jumping ring, with each jump just a little bit higher than the one before. Say, for example, you are being interviewed about an old World War Two mine that some fisherman has just swept up in his net. You have just come round with your mine disposal team in a Land Rover and you’ve just defused the thing or towed it out to sea and detonated it. You did the job all right and everything’s fine. But the interviewer says, “Why did you come round by road, surely it would have been quicker to have come by helicopter?” And, supposing for the sake of argument, you had used a helicopter, he will then ask “Why did it take two hours to get there instead of only one?” And if it had taken only one hour, he would have asked, “Why didn’t it have a crew of twelve on board?” And if you did have a crew of twelve, he would have asked “Why wasn’t one of them a fully qualified Harley Street brain surgeon?” And so on. Nobody ever stops to think why on earth should there be a crew of twelve or a Harley Street brain surgeon, or why should there be a helicopter at all if a Land Rover was just as good and just as quick? The viewer is left with the impression that he has been watching an intrepid BBC TV interviewer once again uncovering Ministry of Defence bumbledom.

  ‘If you get a really hostile question, a real dirty one, it sometimes helps to reel back on the ropes, and then rebound again. You can repeat the question, to show that you’re not afraid of its implications. In a way, repeating it helps to deflate it, defuse it, show it as somehow unreasonable, even ridiculous. For example, he may say to you, “Don’t you think the Navy is an anachronistic, class-ridden, and very expensive white elephant these days?” You begin your reply by saying, “No, I don’t think the Navy is an anachronistic, class-ridden and very expensive white elephant,” repeating him word for word, and then you go on to say that on the contrary, you think that the Navy is an extremely modern, up-to-date, democratic institution which gives extremely good value for money.

  ‘Now,’ said Superjack, ‘have a look at this,’ He nodded at the red-heads, and on the screen flashed a picture of the head and shoulders of a man. The sound had been turned down and there was just a moving picture of a man’s talking head, obviously answering a series of questions from some interviewer off screen. He was speaking, pausing, speaking again. But he was also ducking his head, as though trying to avoid a blow, gnawing his lower lip, looking sharply away and down as though something on the floor had frightened him, putting his tongue in his cheek and thoughtfully chewing it, licking his lips, scratching his nose. His face was only very faintly familiar.

  When the screen went blank, Superjack asked, ‘Would you buy a second-hand boat from that man? Anybody know who that was?’

  The Bodger felt that he really ought to know, but he could not put a name to the face, and neither could anybody else.

  ‘Well, that was from an actual TV interview of the Minister of State for the Navy ...’ Superjack waited for the College’s great bellow of laughter to die down. ‘... Speaking on independent television some four months ago. He was, in fact, trying to explain why his Government had just announced the third set of cuts in defence in six months, when they had assured everybody that the defence cuts they made at the beginning of the year would be the last for at least twelve months. We showed it first without the sound, so that you could concentrate on the facial and body gestures. You can see that there is a language of the face and body, much more subtle and much more revealing than most of us ever guess. Now we’ll show it again, and bring back the sound.’

  It was little more convincing, but not much. Now that Superjack had pointed them out, his audience easily saw through the verbal fencing, the evasions, the qualifications, the attempts to justify the unjustifiable. When the unseen interviewer said ‘Some people are saying that the Government’s attitude is dishonest and short-sighted’ and the Minister replied ‘No I don’t think the Government’s attitude is dishonest and shortsighted,’ there was another great roar of derisive laughter.

  ‘Not a pretty sight, was it?’ said Superjack. ‘Notice how he tried the repetition dodge and you all laughed. It failed because his tone of voice, and even his facial expression, was not as confident as the interviewer’s voice. You must not only repeat the words, you must also reproduce the tone of voice, exactly, so that it’s a mirror image, like a ball bouncing truly and strongly off a wall.

  ‘Now you may think you’ll never be interviewed by TV or radio or the newspapers. You’re wrong. This isn’t just for admirals and captains and ministers. It might happen to you at any time, you might suddenly be somewhere when something has happened. In such cases, think over what the interviewer is going to as
k you. He will almost always semi-rehearse it with you, and tell you what sort of thing he is going to ask. Think about it, and prepare what you are going to say in your mind. Then stand up, speak up, and shut up.

  ‘Don’t relax your guard until you see the reporter physically driving off in his car. Perhaps this applies more to newspaper interviews, but any reporter will tell you he quite often gets his best story and his best quotes when the chap being interviewed thought the interview was over. He’s said his piece, he’s said good-bye, he’s walking the reporter to the front gate, it’s all over. But he lingers, talking, as people do and he often gives the reporter more information in those last few moments, at the garden gate, than he ever did inside the house.’

  Superjack had them all in the palm of his hand, there was no doubt about it. He was a superb communicator, a masterly exponent of his own theories of presentation. The Bodger realised that Superjack’s was the kind of address the modern OUTs enjoyed most. Yet Superjack himself still had an engaging modesty.

  ‘Aw shucks, Bodger,’ He said, shrugging off The Bodger’s compliments later. ‘It’s my job now.’

  ‘It seems a strange job for an NO.’

  ‘Lord, Bodger, you find ex-NOs in all sorts of jobs now.’

  ‘You mean golf club secretary and all that?’

  ‘Lord no, you’re a bit of out of date with that. No, they’re clerks of racecourses, company secretaries, advertising account executives, managers of holiday firms, vineyard owners, nothing menial you understand, nothing hoi-polloi-ish. But still, not the old parish councillor, vegetable-trainer, dog-walker, retired admiral image either. Not the little white-washed seaside cottage with pinks and roses growing round the door, and the quarterdeck manner and the blue blazer either.’

  The Bodger had to admit that Superjack had the power to arouse the most evocative series of mental images.

  ‘It’s the same with the ex-chiefs and POs. In fact they’re even more confident. You could almost say there’s been a transfer of confidence in the Navy from the officers to the senior rates. While the officers are wondering what sort of Navy it’s going to be like in the future, the chiefs and POs are seizing opportunities with both hands. When they come out of the Navy these days they are not about to keep country pubs or be a sub-postmaster or a commissionaire. Not these days, mate. You go to a light engineering firm in the Home Counties making, say, castors and fittings for armchairs and sofas. Nine times out of ten you’ll see an ex-chief petty officer on the board, or an ex-ERA as technical director. It’s only the officers these days who wonder who they are and where they’re going. Anyway, Bodger, it’s been nice to come back here. It’s good of you to put up with us. I don’t think you need any advice on presentation from me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘After all, to reach four rings you must have conducted a pretty fair campaign in the naval media yourself!’

  CHAPTER IX

  ‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger lay back in his bath and rolled the strange words around on his tongue. Having never met the phrase before, he now heard it on all sides. A crisis of identity at the Britannia Royal Naval College. It seemed a contradiction in terms, as improbable as that massive Britannia figurehead on the parade ground suddenly losing faith in her upheld trident.

  ‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger turned on the hot tap with his right big toe. If the words had any meaning at all they surely went to the very nub of his job at the College. They might even provide a clue to a problem which had come to occupy The Bodger’s thoughts increasingly in the weeks since he had joined the College: what sort of Navy were they preparing these young men for? And were these the right young men? Perhaps they were getting the wrong ones and teaching them the wrong things?

  ‘Crisis of identity’. There was too much hot water. The Bodger turned off the hot tap and turned on the cold, paddling the rush of hotter water up his right hand. Perhaps the Navy itself was suffering from a crisis of identity. What did we want a Navy for? We could no longer afford the world-wide influence at sea which we had enjoyed for about three centuries. The price of Admiralty was much too high. But if we could not be a blue-water Navy, should we be a shoal-water Navy? Maybe we should just concentrate on guarding the oil fields and oil rigs of the North Sea.

  ‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger said the words aloud. In that high-roofed bathroom they reverberated around in the rafters, like a choral chant in a cathedral. Did the pre-war College suffer misgivings? Surely not.

  ‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger sang the words, to the tune of La donna è mobile.

  Julia thumped on the door. ‘Breakfast time!’

  After breakfast and divisions, at Polly’s briefing, The Bodger asked ‘Do we ever keep any statistics about OUTs?’

  ‘Statistics, sir?’ Polly looked as though she had just said ‘unmentionables’. ‘There’s the Prof.’s exam results and tutors’ reports and all that, sir?’

  ‘No, I mean real statistics. Where they come from, what schools they went to, who their parents were, and all that?’

  ‘Oh no, sir, I don’t think we’ve got anything like that,’ Polly said, as though the very suggestion of anything like that was somehow sneaky.

  ‘By the way what’s happened to Scratch this morning?’

  ‘Oh, he went on his division’s yacht race round the Mewstone on Wednesday, sir, and caught a chill. He’s had to stay in bed. There’s rounds of all the divisional blocks and cabins this morning, sir.’

  At eleven The Bodger set off, followed by a small rounds party, to tour the part of the College behind the main visible facade, where there were several individual mazes of smaller offices, rows of cabins, some dormitories, bathrooms and gunrooms, each allocated to a different division. Pre-war, each term of cadets had led its own hermetically sealed off existence in its own segment of the building and never had any contact or association with any other term. No cadet even talked to one of another term, although brothers were allowed to walk up and down the quarterdeck with each other for a few minutes on Sunday mornings after church service. Now, The Bodger could see that there were fewer dormitories and many more small cabins. There were photographs and transistor radios on the chests, posters on the bulkheads. But, as he went round, The Bodger could still catch a whiff of that old repressive atmosphere. It still lurked there, in that warren of small rooms, tucked away out of sight, but never dying, that old, stem, unforgiving, draconian heart of the Britannia College. Though only beating faintly, it was still there, and The Bodger felt a chill at his own heart when he remembered the unheated pre-war dormitories the cold salt water baths, the enforced silences, the official beatings, the constant inspections, the frantic changes of rig and the furious doublings, up the hill and down the hill, along the corridors and back, up the stairs and down again, so as to be present and correct somewhere else in an impossibly short space of time. The Bodger recalled vividly, with a pain that still had the power to hurt him, the fiercely loyal friendships, the shattering betrayals, the resentments born of isolation, the injustices borne without a murmur, the hero-worshipping and the bullying, the ostracisms and the ferocious physical hurt of punishment. Through long and close acquaintanceship, a Dartmouth term came to know each other more thoroughly, through and through, than perhaps it was healthy or proper for young men to know each other. Such a claustrophobic existence, of closed doors and closed minds, encouraged secrecies, from surreptitious smoking to occasional buggery, although this last was always more feared and commented upon by outsiders than actually practised inside the College; with cadets of different ages so rigidly segregated and having so little unsupervised spare time, the practical difficulties were often too great.

  The earlier origins of an OUT might or might not be shrouded in mystery, but once he had arrived at the College he was subjected to a bleak, minutely-detailed official scrutiny in which his every bodily and mental characteristic was meticulously recorded. The walls of the Hon. John’s divisional office, for exampl
e, were covered with state boards, recording in different colours and symbols his division’s ages, heights, weights, nationalities, and physical state, with different tabs for vaccinations, inoculations, dental treatment, boat proficiency tests, swimming tests, examinations passed, trips to sea, vacation projects, syllabus, type of entry, branch and specialisation. From the boards a glance, or rather close searching, would reveal what every officer had done, what he was doing, and what he would be doing, while he was at the College.

  The Bodger peered at the nearest board. ‘Tell me, do you ever do any research into the backgrounds of your division?’ ‘Oh no, sir.’ The Hon. John looked totally mystified.

  ‘You never, say, vary your lectures on leadership to suit the various entries you’re getting?’

  ‘Lectures on leadership, sir?’ The Hon. John looked, if it was possible, even more at a loss.

  ‘You do give lectures on leadership?’

  ‘Oh no, sir.’

  The Bodger tried again. ‘When I was a DO here, I used to tell them all about not backing horses ante-post and drawing trumps and, not being too free with the Admiral’s daughter unless I really meant it … ’

  ‘Oh that, sir!’ A smile of pure enlightenment broke out on the Hon. John’s face. ‘What we call the facts of life. Yes sir, we do that, as a matter of course.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  The officer in charge of the next division was Lieutenant Commander Wright who was known, like many of his surname in the Navy, as Shiner. Shiner Wright was a very short and very round and very ebullient man. He had been sub of the gunroom in the old Superb. Like Charlie Charleshaughton, he had his own divisional slogan or war-cry, ‘Fingers out, Frobishers’. Although the walk from the Hon. John’s office to Shiner’s took less than two minutes, the College jungle drum had already spoken, and Shiner knew The Bodger was interested in statistics.