Good Enough For Nelson

by John Winton

  Regular Sunday evening PC-makers would not have recognised the bleak, rather cool, unwelcoming living room in which Julia welcomed Perky when he came down that evening.

  ‘I hope you’re comfortable,’ said Julia, doubtfully. ‘I’m sorry about the camp-bed ... But you know how it is ...’

  ‘Of course.’ Perky had already decided that it would do him no harm to rough it for one night or so. But he was glad he was not staying at this College any longer. His socialist puritanism nudged his conscience, but he was finding this spartan establishment too much for his sense of what was fitting for a Minister. The living conditions, the food, the physical regime ... everything he had seen that day... the poor facilities or the complete lack of them... Good God, they had been more comfortable and better looked after as seamen boys at Ganges! Far from shutting the place down, Perky now felt his crusading instincts rising to have the place put right.

  Purvis was serving his special medicinal sherry, in minute glasses which he had filled only half-full. The portion was so meagre that in spite of herself Julia felt compelled to apologise. ‘We’ve had to pull in our horns a bit, I’m afraid,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you get a Captain’s entertainment allowance?’

  Julia thought this hardly a fit subject to discuss with a guest, but she said ‘Oh yes, but it hasn’t been increased for quite a while.’

  ‘Never mind, I’m an optimist.’ When Julia looked puzzled, Perky went on, ‘An optimist says his glass is half full. A pessimist says it’s half empty.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  Perky appeared to recognise Purvis. ‘Don’t I remember you?’ he said.

  Purvis had been waiting to be recognised. ‘You do, sir,’ he said, at once. ‘We’re old ships. You was on the old Superb with me.’

  ‘That’s right! Old ships! It’s always good to meet old ships again!’

  ‘I was Chief Bosun’s Mate,’ continued Purvis, ‘and you was an OD. First ship, you was. Green as grass you was, sir.’

  ‘So I was.’ Perky visibly shrivelled. ‘So I was indeed,’ he said, much less enthusiastically. He slid adroitly away, and began to talk to Polly.

  ‘I’ve seen you on television,’ said Polly.

  ‘Have you really?’ Perky preened himself. ‘Yes, they do ask me to appear quite a lot.’

  ‘Every time there are defence cuts,’ said Polly.

  ‘Ah well, yes,’ said Perky, much less confidently.

  Purvis whispered to Julia. Perky wondered what they were saying about him.

  ‘Dinner’s ready. Shall we go in?’

  Julia’s dinner parties were already famous in the College for their warmth and food and company. She was recognised, albeit grudgingly in some wives’ quarters, to be one of the best hostesses the College had ever seen. But that night, when Julia’s guests went into the dining room for the dinner in Perky’s honour, they could see at once that this evening was going to be different.

  The Captain’s dining room, always a somewhat large and forbidding compartment, was now positively chilling. One single very bright light shone above the table. Some cartoons of the old Superb belonging to The Bodger had been taken down from the walls, together with a rather pleasant nineteenth-century painting of a Blackwall frigate beating out past the Needles, which had hung above the fireplace and which many guests had admired; in its place was a small hand-printed notice, which read ‘Defence Cuts 1966’. The giant cheese platter on the side-board, normally crammed with cheeses of various nationalities and colours jostling each other shoulder to shoulder, now had as many ominous gaps as divisions that morning. The glasses on the table were not of the same size or pattern and the side-plates looked as though Purvis had bought them at Dartmouth British Legion Summer Jumble Sale for the Glorious First of June. Some were white, some blue, some green, and Perky’s had a seaside scene, a Souvenir of Polperro.

  They sat down ten to dinner. Julia was at the head of the table at one end, with Perky on her right and Jerry on her left. The Bodger sat at the other end opposite her, with Hilda on his left and Lady Molly Willoughby-Morton-Prior on his right.

  Lady Moll was a very well-known local personality. Generations of College cross-country runners, beagle followers, and Roughexers had panted across her land. Smaller and more select parties of cadets had been to her house for tea and sympathy and, in some even more select cases, a good deal more than sympathy. Lady Moll’s love for the Navy, for young men, and especially for young naval men, was legendary. The initials of her surname, WMP, were a traditional naval signalese abbreviation when accepting an invitation, meaning ‘With Much Pleasure’, and Lady Moll had always believed that it was as blessed to give as to receive. Everyone assumed that at some distant time in the past there must have existed a Sir WMP, but like the Knights of the Round Table he was now lost in the mists of local mythology. Meanwhile, for years Lady Moll went her own libidinous way, parading at the County Show as freely with her lovers as with her heifers. The Bodger had known her for years and was devoted to her. She still had a certain formidable charm but she was growing absent-minded and somewhat deaf in her late middle age. She had never heard of Perky before, never even seen him on television. She had only barely listened to the nature of his job and was under the vague impression that he was the under-secretary of a bacon company. She was still wondering whether she could have heard it aright. It seemed to her an astonishing, though doubtless very necessary, profession but Lady Moll did wonder still what such a man was doing dining at the Captain’s table.

  In the two other places on each side were Polly and Lionel Tinkle, and Lucy and Isaiah Nine Smith, all four invited and placed so, under Julia’s all-seeing eye. All four were delighted to be invited and so placed and they formed a happy, contented centre for the party. Their contentment was soon put to the test.

  ‘How are you enjoying your visit to Dartmouth, Minister?’ Lucy asked, politely.

  Perky looked up from studying the scene on his side plate. ‘Very much indeed, thank you,’ he said. ‘Though I must say it’s all quite different to what I expected.’

  ‘And what did you expect?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Well, for one thing, I expected to see the famous model of a sailor.’

  Model of a sailor? They all stared uncomprehendingly at each other.

  ‘What model of a sailor?’ said Hilda, at last.

  ‘Well, when I was an ordinary seaman, everybody on the lower deck was quite convinced that somewhere at Dartmouth there was a life-sized stuffed model of a sailor, so that the cadets could practise kicking it.’

  The appalled silence was broken by Lady Moll calling across to Perky, ‘Are yer pigs all yer own, or do you have to buy ’em in?’

  Perky, believing that he was being addressed by a maniac, ignored her.

  ‘Serve soup sir, please,’ said Purvis suddenly. He began to place soup-plates along each side of the table. Some of them were plain, some coloured, some flowered, and Perky’s had Grand Hotel Torquay in gothic gold lettering round its rim.

  The soup was lentil, lumpy and lukewarm. The chef had excelled himself, in a negative sort of way.

  ‘I thought of that stuffed sailor,’ Perky was saying through his soup, ‘many times a day when I was on the Superb. That first lieutenant. Number One they used to call him...’ Perky paused, and looked round the table, but whether for applause, surprise, confirmation or breath, nobody could tell. ‘That wasn’t all we used to call him ...’

  ‘My father was first lieutenant in HMS Superb once,’ Polly said. ‘I wonder if that could have been the same time? He was a socialist, too.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Perky, disbelievingly.

  Lionel Tinkle, who by now knew Polly’s own form of conversational kung fu very well from personal experience, sat back to await developments.

  ‘Your father? A socialist?’ said Perky, apparently anxious to hurry on his own fate.

  ‘Oh yes. Daddy’s a socialist admiral. He says it’s the only thing any thinking man can ever
be and he can’t understand how anybody could be anything else. Mind you, he does say that socialism would be splendid if it weren’t for the socialists.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Perky.

  ‘Oh yes. Daddy used to tell me that whenever he knelt down beside his hammock to say his prayers...’

  ‘His hammock?’

  ‘His hammock. Daddy always sleeps in a hammock.’ Polly seemed surprised by the question. ‘It’s so good for his bad back that he got in the war. He used to tell me that whenever he knelt down beside his hammock to say his prayers, he always used to say, God bless Mummy and Daddy, God bless Auntie Flora and Uncle Charlie, God bless Corky the cat, God bless me and make me a good boy and, please God, get Labour into power.’

  ‘Polly, whatever for?’ said Hilda, aghast.

  ‘So they could abolish private education and we wouldn’t have to pay school fees any more, Daddy said!’

  As the table laughter roared round his ears, Perky, like many a better man before him, stared at Polly’s delicious, impenetrable exterior, unwilling to believe what he fancied he saw. Concealed in that delectable front, that figure, that black jersey blouse, those corn-flower ear-rings, the naval crown brooch in small diamonds, the peaches and cream complexion, those sweet china blue eyes, could there really be such a ferocious, man-devouring, sledge-hammer-replying war-tank, armed at every plate and point with stinging retort and wounding innocence?

  ‘Serve fish sir, please,’ said Purvis, whipping away the empty soup plates and laying another multi-coloured, multi-patterned selection.

  Lady Moll’s plate was made in the form of a large, luridly green, cupped lettuce leaf, with great, rope-like veins standing out from it.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said to Isaiah Nine Smith, sitting next to her, ‘this plate makes me feel quite sick.’

  ‘Have mine,’ he said, substituting his own more sober willow pattern. But even the little rocking boat on that made Lady Moll feel queasy. Eventually she settled for The Bodger’s patterned plate of roses and hollyhocks, with a fine grain of tiny cracks, like a network of minor roads, running all over it.

  ‘You must tell me where you get your china,’ said Lady Moll. ‘But first, who is that little man sitting next to Julia? You did tell me, but I seem to have got it wrong again. What does he do?’

  ‘He’s Under-Secretary of State for the Navy, Lady Molly,’ said The Bodger, getting it wrong himself.

  ‘Good gracious,’ she said, sitting back so sharply her head only just missed the plate Purvis was carrying past. Purvis leapt sideways like an overweight cat. ‘An under one? I didn’t know anybody could still afford them.’

  ‘I say,’ she called across the table again to Perky, ‘do you still use broodies, or have yer got one of those new-fangled incubators?’

  Perky, even more convinced he was being heckled by a lunatic, again ignored her.

  The fish was sole, soggy, and soaked in slimy sauce.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ Lady Moll said to The Bodger, ‘he’s not what I would call sexy. Some of them are, you know.’

  ‘I must respect your opinion in these matters, Lady Moll.’

  ‘I must get him going. I say’ Lady Moll called across, ‘I was just saying, you’re not very sexy, are you?’

  ‘No maybe, but I try harder!’ This time, it was Perky who won the table’s applause. There was no doubt that in his own way Perky was the best dinner party catalyst Julia had ever had. Nobody could ignore him. He prompted conversation. He was like a small hot centre of irritation, goading the dinner party into frantic scratching.

  Lionel Tinkle had been regarding Perky with growing dislike and dismay. Lionel Tinkle generally lived in a metaphysical world of his own from which only the thought, or better still the presence, of Polly could arouse him, and he had been only barely aware of Perky’s visit to the College that day. Two of his lectures had been more sparsely attended -‘all because of defence cuts’, some impudent OUT had informed him. As a good Marxist, Lionel Tinkle confidently expected the Marxist millennium. It would come, as surely as night followed day. But it would not come at once. On the way, Perky was the sort of political person that had to be endured. He was the first politician Lionel Tinkle had ever encountered in a social context and Lionel Tinkle had been looking forward to the meeting. In theory, two such minds should have much to exchange. In fact, Lionel Tinkle found he had nothing to say. There was nothing with which he could even begin a dialogue. This, he realised, was what it meant. This was the true face of power for the people now, this self-opinionated, bigoted, argumentative little man with his aggressive voice and his studied bad manners. Lionel Tinkle turned away from him, as though turning his face to the wall.

  ‘Serve meat sir, please,’ said Purvis. It was mutton, with boiled potatoes and cabbage, served on another hilarious assortment of plates. Perky’s was purple, with a row of red knobs round its edge. It looked for all the world like a squashed china jellyfish with a touch of apoplexy.

  Perky looked down the table, feeling that he was travelling down between two rows of his enemies. Their voices annoyed him. Their disdain grated on him, and made him angry. He took his glass and drained the rose-coloured wine in it, holding up the glass for that surly Chief Buffer to fill again. There were compensations in being a Minister for the Navy. It might make one unpopular in the party, but one did have a particularly tyrannical ex-chief to top up one’s glass. Perky had meant to challenge The Bodger outright, and ask him, what good is your College? But Perky was not so bold as he had been. He hesitated to lock horns so brazenly across the dinner table. The dark girl looked promising.

  Lucy returned Perky’s attention, though not in a way that would have pleased him had he known. Lucy, as she had so often made clear to Isaiah Nine Smith, had nothing but contempt for the Navy or for any of the armed services. She often wondered, she told Ikey, why their food didn’t choke them. But at least, she had to admit, they did have something about them compared with this grubby little turn-off with his grimy fingernails and his bad breath, who scattered his dandruff as freely as 'his opinions, who was too stupid and conceited to see the trick everybody had been playing on him, and still were playing on him. Lucy had to admit that even Ikey, sitting next to her, even though politically he was so right wing he made Adolf Hitler look a raving red and even though he howled with laughter every time she mentioned her macrobiotic diet schedules or her daily meditational poses, even though to be admittedly brutally honest he was really rather a bit of a reactionary fascist hyena actually, still had a certain style about him.

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about defence cuts today,’ said Perky suddenly, and was gratified to see that he had the attention of the whole table at once. ‘It’s sort of been in the air. It’s perfectly true that my party are more generally associated with cuts in defence expenditure than the opposition...’

  That, thought the Bodger, was the biggest understatement since Horatio told Lady Nelson he would be late at the office.

  ‘... But if you try and make real economies in defence,’ Perky went on, ‘and perhaps here I’m rather going across my party’s normal policy statements ...’ Perky had a low tolerance for alcohol. It was impossible for anybody to become intoxicated through Purvis’s ministrations, but Perky had come as close as was physiologically possible. Their faces, down the table, made him want to shock them. ‘... If you are going to have real defence cuts, then you are going to have to do something about getting rid of civil servants. There are fourteen thousand civil servants working for the Ministry of Defence in offices and establishments in and around London alone. Fourteen thousand. Not including the rest of the country. You’re going to have to sack some of them. You’re going to have to sack all those middle-aged women in cardigans and flat shoes who clutter up the corridors and the lifts in all those Ministry of Defence office buildings.’

  ‘They’re all spinsters, with big bottoms and withered necks,’ said Perky, warming to his subject. ‘Or else they’re divorcees, or
anyway they all have frustrated sex lives and they live with their widowed mothers in semi-detacheds all over south London. They come up by train to Waterloo or Victoria in shoals every morning. Good God, if you sacked all those you’d turn half London south of the Thames into a disaster area! People, even in my own party, should I say especially in my own party, talk about defence cuts as though they were getting rid of bits of metal. It’s not. It’s people. It’s remarkable how many men have come into my job, members of my party, breathing fire and slaughter and vowing they were going to sort out the armed services once and for all and teach all those admirals and generals and air marshals exactly where they got off. They soon calm down when they find out that to do anything really drastic they would only be the scourge of the widows of Wimbledon. And, paradoxically, defence cuts need more civil servants to carry them out. You end up having more civil servants. Not less.’

  In The Bodger’s opinion, Perky had summed up perfectly what his party had done. It was indeed a case of less Navy, and more bureaucrats. The Bodger refrained from any comment. Perky was, after all, his guest and The Bodger had divined, in a moment of intuition, that beneath the politician’s confident carapace Perky was secretly insecure, and desperately needed reassurance. Looking down the table, The Bodger could sense that Julia knew it, too.

  ‘All these old ladies in this country,’ Perky was saying, evidently in profoundly misogynic mood, ‘they own and control far too much of the nation’s wealth. They’ve been left all these assets when their husbands die and now they sit like scraggy old hens, mouldering away on top of a great treasure heap of houses, and money, and businesses, and share portfolios, and pictures, and books, and furniture, and priceless manuscripts and relics. Any writer of modern history or modern biography will tell you the first thing he has to do is to butter up the widows. It’s too much. Too many old women, living by themselves in too many large houses.’

  ‘I live all by myself in a large house,’ said Lady Moll.