Good Enough For Nelson

by John Winton

  More defence cuts were announced. Meanwhile, inside the College, The Bodger watched the shapes and characters of various divisions and entries forming before his eyes. There were keen divisions, and there were bolshie divisions, stable divisions and nearly neurotic divisions. There were divisions that decided against their divisional officers, and there were divisions that by some marvellous chemical or emotional accident settled down at once into a competitive team, in harmony with itself and at war with everybody else. There was no knowing which way a division of midshipmen would go and The Bodger was wise enough to know that it was a gross oversimplification to attribute a term’s character wholly to its divisional officer.

  Conscious that he was still feeling his way, a man of the past entrusted with part of the Navy’s future, The Bodger was able to pick out the different personalities in the divisions. Trouble could come from only one or two strongly disruptive elements. Some complained of racial disharmony. The RN officers were convinced that they were picked upon by Gromboolian officers set in authority. But likewise the Gromboolians in the same division nearly always maintained that they were discriminated against by the RN officers in their turn. There were some midshipmen who suddenly went sour on the College, as though in a mental mutiny, temporary but disturbing. There were those who found the College a constant struggle, and like the Red Queen had to run hard to stay where they were. There were others, not a few, who carefully cultivated a posture of indifference to the College and its ways, refusing to be impressed or enthusiastic, as though to do so would contravene some rule learned in the playground. On these, the College bore down with its own peculiar brand of ferocity. There were some, again a few, who unaccountably blossomed, and to everyone’s surprise and delight, seemed to grow overnight and begin to do well. They were all, whatever their temperaments and capabilities, subjected to a close, personal, unremitting scrutiny. The Bodger, Isaiah Nine Smith, the Prof., the divisional officers and the tutors, exchanged information on the OUTs in a never-ending stream, in conferences, in reports, in conversation. Dartmouth was the most garrulous establishment in the Navy, and it throbbed and boomed like a great drum to the slightest pressure. The least change in anyone’s status resounded from side to side.

  Outside the College The Bodger, like his predecessors as Captain, kept in touch with the very large community of retired officers and their wives who lived in the neighbourhood. There were so many of them that, as The Bodger said, ‘Dartmouth’s like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan, on every side field marshals gleamed, with admirals the harbour teemed.’ They settled in Dartmouth or over the river in Kingswear, in small houses or bungalows called ‘Gybe-Oh!’ or ‘Dunstemin’, because they liked the climate, and the countryside, and the congenial company, and possibly to re-experience the scenes of their boyhood and early manhood. Some of them came nostalgically to watch divisions, or a cricket match, or to a carol service, and one or two of them wrote furious letters of complaint to the College whenever Buster flew too low over their hydrangeas.

  To pay calls on some of the retired officers was, as The Bodger sometimes thought, to walk down memory lane, where some of the best jokes about Service life were actually being lived out. One retired colonel of Royal Marines lived by himself in a small brick bungalow called ‘Zeebrugge’. After forty years in the Corps, the Colonel had a taste for early morning ceremonial and no day, in his view, was properly started without the hoisting of flags on the flagstaff in his front garden. Unfortunately he had been prevented by what he called blasted officialdom from hoisting the White Ensign, the Trinity House flag, the pennant of the Commandant of the Royal Marines or any of the flags he liked, except the Union Jack, because he was not entitled. At last, one morning, the colonel ceremonially hoisted two new flags to his yard-arm. One was plain red, the other was plain green, like port and starboard flags, but both had the letters MOBF emblazoned across them. When The Bodger saw them he asked, like everybody else, what the letters stood for. ‘My Own Bloody Flag, ‘growled the Colonel.

  ‘And what’s the other one, then?’

  ‘My Other Bloody Flag.’

  Two pocket handkerchief-sized lawns, two purple fuchsia bushes and two neat slate house name-plates further down the hill from the Colonel lived a retired Admiral and his lady, who were both fanatical gardeners, grew asparagus in a bed, kept bees, and generally lived the simple, self-sufficient life. The Bodger admired them both vastly because to him, as to many naval officers, all flowers were red flowers or blue flowers or yellow flowers. But the Admiral and his lady were champion cultivators and, what was more, they did it all themselves.

  ‘No gardener,’ the Admiral told The Bodger. ‘Do it all ourselves, every bit. And talking of that, I’ll tell you something. One day I was out there in front trimming me hedge, when one of these large flashy cars drew up in. the lane and a large flashy woman looked out of it. “How much do they pay you here, my man?” she said to me. So I tipped my old gardening hat to her, you know my old gardening hat?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said The Bodger, ‘I do.’

  ‘ “Not nearly enough, mum,” I said to her. “Whatever it is then,” she said to me, “I’ll double it!” So I paused for a moment and wiped my hands on my old gardening overalls, you know my old gardening overalls?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said The Bodger, ‘I do.’

  ‘ “Ah, that’s all very well, mum,” I said to her, “but you see, mum, I gets extra perks here, mum.” “Perks,” she said me, “perks, what perks?” “Well mum,” I said to her, “I gets to sleep with the missus occasionally.” And with that, she drove on.’

  For her part, Julia called on the College wives at home. She took her calls seriously, and she was old-fashioned enough to call in the proper way; nobody ever left cards any more, and even though Julia did take cards she seldom found anywhere in people’s halls to leave one. But she did wear a hat and gloves. In a new world, a call by the Captain’s wife seemed a piece of protocol from the past and not all the wives necessarily welcomed it. Some were amused, some flattered, and while some thought it a tiresome anachronism, as many others polished and scrubbed and shined their houses as though expecting royalty. Julia was a game girl and conscientiously called on everybody, working doggedly through the Baby List. Her calls taught her, in many sidelong ways, a great deal about the causes behind much of what happened in the College social life.

  The O’Malleys lived in one of Dartmouth’s few large Victorian houses, their family being too much for even the biggest Service married quarter. With its uncut lawn, unkempt laurel hedge and its short, damp drive, the house had a somewhat mysterious approach. There was a carved wooden gable over the front porch, an ornate cast-iron boot-scraper, and the front door had a window of coloured glass, worked in a design of diamonds, wreaths, orbs and trailing creeper leaves. As Julia stood in the porch, pulling at the thick metal bell-rope, she could hear sounds from inside: a woman screaming with rage, shouts, drumming of feet, a slap and a cry of pain.

  ‘Don’t you dare say such things to me! ’

  ‘Kevin says his Daddy says the Navy exists on tax-payers’ money! ’

  'Kevin. You tell Kevin ... I’ll tell Kevin ... Come here ...’

  There was more running and thundering of footsteps. Through the coloured glass Julia glimpsed figures, weirdly distorted in greens and dark reds crossing the hall and the same woman, whom Julia realised was Ruth O’Malley, still screeching with rage.

  After a long silence, Ruth herself opened the door.

  ‘Julia. How nice of you to call.’ This was the woman, now, whom Julia recognised at the College functions. It was hard to credit that it was also the same harridan Julia had heard screaming and screeching moments before. But Julia could see very well the trouble. Ruth was tried too hard, kept too busy, had too many demands on her attention and care and love. Unfortunately, Julia had arrived at a time of extreme crisis.

  They looked at each other, Julia in her hat and gloves and going-out suit, Ruth in her apro
n. Julia could see that young Ruth took after her mother; the girl had better marry early, for that kind of blonde good looks departed with youth.

  Ruth pushed a stray hair away from her face. ‘With two down with chicken-pox and two in quarantine for chicken-pox, I’ve hardly had time to know whether I’m coming or going this morning. Come in, do.’

  The hall-stand was set crookedly, the carpet was misaligned, as though screwed sideways by many rushing feet. A brass tub was raggedly stuffed with umbrellas, sticks, cricket bats and tennis racquets. Football boots and assorted shoes were strewn along the base of one wall. The mirror hung lop-sidedly enough to be noticeable.

  ‘I can see this is not a good time to call...’ Julia began.

  ‘It won’t get any better.’

  ‘Do you have any help in the house at all?”

  “I have a woman comes in three days a week, but this is isn’t one of her days. It isn’t one of mine either.’

  Julia came to a sudden decision. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll hold the fort here, while you go down to the town and do some shopping. Have your hair done.’

  ‘Oh, do you think I need it done?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. What I meant was that you can be as long as you like. I’ll look after everything here, and you can do some shopping, do whatever you like.’

  Almost all the women Julia knew would instantly have recoiled from such a suggestion, however practical and helpful it was, as an admission of failure on their part. But Ruth was properly desperate.

  ‘You know, that really would be very convenient. Would you really do that?’

  ‘Of course I would.’ Ruth took off her apron, while Julia took off her hat and gloves. Julia had no idea how she was going to handle the O’Malley gang, now mustering on the landing to stare down through the banisters at her, but one thing she did know: all the welfare schemes and grants and social workers and well-meaning visitors and good intentions in the world did not equal one person on the spot willing and able to hold the fort while mum got out of the house.

  As the summer went on, the world outside the College, the world of sport and pageantry, or drama and agriculture, began puzzlingly to impinge upon the life of the College. Looking at his Times one morning, The Bodger noticed, sandwiched between a letter complaining about a plague of lady-birds and another demanding to know where had all the grasshoppers gone, a letter headed ‘Britannia Rules: OK?’. The writer, sometime a television critic, complained that whenever he switched on his set to watch any sporting or social occasion, there, to his increasing dismay, was sure to be one and perhaps two young naval officers in uniform. A beaming midshipman had followed the Queen out to meet the two teams during the Lords Test Match; there had been another two in the Royal Box at Wimbledon; and there was a large black sub-lieutenant in the last coach of the Royal procession at Ascot, grinning and waving to the race crowds as to the manner born. The writer went on to complain that there had been mysterious naval officers lurking in the crowds at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, at a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of King Lear at the Royal Show at Stoneleigh, and at the Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. Was this, wondered the egregious writer, the prelude to a naval coup d’etat?

  Thoughtfully, The Bodger thumbed through the paper. There was a report of the National Union of Mineworkers’ annual conference at Scarborough. A picture of the union leaders on the platform showed, in the back row, linking arms and apparently singing the Red Flag with gusto, the unmistakeable figure of Syllabub. On the arts page, there was a picture of some of the guests at the private view of a London one-man exhibition of the work of a newly fashionable Zulu sculptor; with no surprise, The Bodger was able to pick out the supercilious features of Midshipman Mellard.

  The Bodger sent for Isaiah Nine Smith. ‘Isn’t this getting a bit out of hand?’ he said, tapping his finger on Syllabub.

  ‘Not really, sir. We get a lot of invitations in the normal course of events, anyway. Most of them just die, nobody takes any notice. But once the word gets around that we do accept, that somebody from the College always turns up, and turns up properly, in full rig, uniform, car, the lot, then we get more invitations. People like people who accept. And, of course, we actually applied for invitations to some of the service and public functions in the West Country and in London. We have got about two hundred OUTs and we want to give them a shot during the term. It’s all in the luck of the draw, sir. One chap might get Henley Regatta, another gets the church fete at Dittisham. I think it’s working quite well, sir. Some of them have put in some very good reports.’

  Guiltily, The Bodger remembered the ever-fattening file marked ‘Visits’ which periodically appeared and disappeared unread from his desk.

  ‘Some of them are very interesting and revealing, sir. Blueston, for instance, he went to the Prison Visitors’ annual conference, he said he couldn’t have thought of a more off-putting occasion, but in fact he said he might well have a go at it himself in his leaves, he was so impressed. Being in the Navy has always involved dealing with different sorts of people in a professional way, in all sorts of situations.’

  This was certainly one of the arguments Isaiah Nine Smith used with Lucy. He was not, he thought, interested in impressing her about himself; that was a matter of complete indifference to him. But what she thought about the Navy, that was important, that was worth taking trouble over. There was no way to convince her of the Navy’s importance as an intellectual force. The only way was to demonstrate the Navy’s power to influence, to assimilate different people, to turn people towards different views, to do its job with professional grace, to charm people, if you like. He was not so interested in what she thought of him. But her opinion of the Service, that did matter.

  ‘We’re even getting invitations for the Farnborough Air Show, the Last Night of the Proms, the Opening of Parliament, next year’s European Cup Final, and the Winter Olympics...’

  ‘I expect they’ll invite young Persimmons to carry the torch,’ said The Bodger.

  ‘Yes, sir. The idea is catching on up at the Ministry, too, sir. They’re thinking of broadening the scheme, putting it on a proper basis and making it available to others, not just officers under training at Dartmouth. There was a DCI about it a short while back, sir. I expect you saw it, sir. It’s all rather exciting, sir.’

  The Bodger had not read the DCI, nor did he think the idea was rather exciting. On the contrary, he felt momentarily ashamed of himself, because he felt he was growing old and losing his sense of humour. Ten years before he would have delighted in the fact that an off-hand whim of his should have taken on such a life and volition of its own. But now it seemed to him merely another symptom of a Navy that did not have enough to do, a Navy that for years had been investing more in buildings than in ships, in office heating rather than in weapons.

  All this visiting and junketing smacked of too much mountain-climbing and pony-trekking and cross-country piano-trundling and pushing peas along with one’s nose and all the other things the Navy now did, ostensibly for charity, but really to pass the time. The image of Tremendous Mackenzie, hard-pressed to put to sea because most of his sailors were out raising money for charity, was typical of the modern Navy. The Bodger was about to say that the Navy was going to the dogs, but he stopped, remembering that he had been saying exactly the same thing twenty years before. It was as true, or as untrue, now, as it was then.

  Isaiah Nine Smith had a further point to make. ‘I think these outside visits, sir, if I can call them that, are all the more valuable because they counter-balance the academic side. We need evolutions which resemble the sort of thing officers will be required to do when they get to the fleet. The academic syllabus is getting really high-powered nowadays, sir, as you know. We teach subjects we would never have dreamed of touching only a few years ago. It may be the influence of all these graduate officers, bringing a more intellectual atmosphere into the place, but it’s really getting quite noticeable how egg-h
eadish the College is becoming.’

  The Prof. most emphatically did not agree. He regarded Isaiah Nine Smith’s outside visits as further incontrovertible evidence of the College’s steady mental and moral deterioration. Consule planco, he told himself, he could have done something about it. Done more, at any rate. Now, he felt he could only put his point to The Bodger in the strongest possible terms.

  ‘Looking at my academic records, which I do from time to time,’ he told The Bodger, ‘there’s no question about it, th-there’s been a st-steady downward gradient. We’re taking midshipmen nowadays whom scholastically we would never have touched only a few years ago. You know, Bodger, I’m seriously thinking of proposing officially that Latin be introduced into the syllabus for all officers under training, but especially those with a scientific background from their schools.’

  ‘Latin! Cor blimey, Prof., you’ll be saying we ought to go back to training in sail next!’

  ‘Well, now you mention that, there are a number of people not a million miles from this College who would agree with you wholeheartedly that you ought to go back to training in sail. But, as I was saying, Latin is the perfect mind-trainer. Quite apart from its artistic and cultural influence, there’s nothing like Latin for disciplining a young intellect. Besides which, it gives one such a good grounding in English.’

  ‘You can try it on, Prof., but I don’t hold out much hope of you getting it accepted. By the way, how’s the play getting on? Old Oedipus RN?’

  ‘Very well. Mind you, it won’t appeal to the London stage ...’

  ‘Never mind, as long as it appeals to us, that’s the main thing. What was that quotation about the actress who got the bird from the hoi-polloi up in the gallery and said she didn’t mind about them as long as the kai-toi in the stalls liked it?’

  ‘Satis est equitem mihi plaudere,’ said the Prof., with a wondering note in his voice. ‘It’s enough for me that the knights applaud. The actress Arbuscula, in Horace. How on earth did you come to hear that, Bodger?’