Another Great Day at Sea

by Geoff Dyer

  ‘I look over at the statue of big George down in the hangar deck bay. This guy’s geared up and in his flight suit. Don’t know whether he’s running to the battle or away from the battle but you know what? He’s got a smile on his face. So be like good big George. Have a smile on your face. I don’t care what happens in your day. Keep running and do it with a smile on your face. Thank you so very much.’

  There was noisy applause but Stonewall was not quite finished.

  ‘How you feel?’ he boomed out.

  ‘Good!’ boomed back the reply from everybody there.

  ‘HOW YOU FEEL?’

  ‘GOOD!’

  ‘HOW YOU FEEL?’

  ‘GOOD!’

  An understatement, to say the least. I felt so good—so GOOD!—I just wanted to stand there and sob. It was absolutely the most impressive speech that I had ever heard; to have quoted Sassoon (Vidal, not Siegfried) was a touch of genius. I also liked the seditious bit of sculptural analysis that acknowledged that big George might have been running away.9 And to end the whole Henry-V-at-Agincourt bit of oratory with the injunction to keep a smile on one’s face: a definitive rebuttal to the European objection that all the ‘Have a nice day’ stuff is just superficial.

  People were lining up to shake hands, embrace Stonewall and pound him on the back. I shook his hand too but couldn’t meet his eye because mine were full of tears. I thought back to what he’d said earlier, during the Steel Beach Party, about having only one mother. What would his mother have thought if she’d heard and seen him just now? Or his daughter? Impossible to imagine more love and more pride than they would have felt today. How many moments are there in a man’s life to rival that?

  I went back to my stateroom. What a day! The weather. The ocean. The view. The planes. The Steel Beach Party. The Steve Earle song. The line dancing. The Captain in his shorts, the Admiral in hers. Stonewall’s promotion and speech. It was one of the great days of my life, and I could hardly believe the luck and privilege of being a part of it, even if only as an observer, an outsider.

  9. There was another statue of big George in the ship’s little museum, together with a video about his time as a Navy pilot during the Second World War. On one occasion his aircraft was hit on a bombing raid and was immediately ‘engulfed in flames’. He continued on to the target, dropped his bombs on the target and continued flying. By this time, the commentary explained, the flames were really bad (suggesting, at the risk of being slightly pedantic, that the plane had not been totally engulfed before). George instructed his two crewmates to bail out but managed to ditch the plane. He was rescued by a submarine. The two crew members died.

  38

  An unpleasant taxi driver in Albany, in upstate New York, once told me that my bad day had just got worse. Now, incredibly, my great day was about to get better.

  At breakfast I’d eaten a few bananas, a bowl of cereal; later, I’d gnawed on one of Harvey’s lumps of meat. In spite of what he’d said earlier Harvey had not fed up my skinny little ass good (though the fault, it could be argued, was mine). For dinner I’d had some tinned vegetables, cold pasta with tomato sauce and a couple of plums. After that, as an additional source of torment, I was going up to interview Captain Cook . . . Sorry, I mean the Captain’s cook, CS2 Leesa Zilempe (Culinary Specialist Second Class). She had a nice little galley and it was easy to forget, up here, that she was in the Navy at all. It was more like she was a private chef on a yacht whose owner’s taste in decoration was so austere as to be militaristic. Leesa had previous experience of journalists, had been displeased by an article which claimed she was making baked halibut when it was actually fried. I was going to have to be really on the ball here.

  ‘I feel I have to say at the outset that facts are not my strong point,’ I said. ‘To be perfectly honest, strong points are not my strong point. But I’ll do my best.’

  Leesa’s ambition was to cook at the White House. This was never going to be an easy ambition to fulfil but her determination to do so was another emphatic rejection of the it-is-what-it-is attitude to life. One of the reasons I am so bad with facts is that things are always reminding me of other things. In this instance, as soon as what she said reminded me of what Stonewall had said, I found myself thinking of my mum and dad who, for as long as I could remember, had impressed on me the importance of accepting things. It wasn’t one’s ability to change things that was important; it was one’s capacity to put up with things, to suck them up. A direct product of their oppression, their lack of opportunity, this stoicism served them well, particularly my dad, especially in later life when he became burdened by all kinds of unchangeable and, one might have thought, unendurable hardships. So much so that, in his West Country way, he became a kind of personification of some Eastern ideal of nonresistance to life’s vicissitudes. I, on the other hand, with the gradual expansion of opportunity afforded by grammar school and then Oxford, became conscious of an inability to accept anything. Far from being able to take things as they were I always wanted them to be different but lacked Stonewall’s energetic (and very American) belief in the ability to make a difference.

  I tuned back in to what Leesa was saying—though to put it like that is slightly misleading; I had scarcely even tuned in before I’d drifted off. It was while working at a restaurant where a benefit for Camp David was being organized that her desire to cook at the White House took hold. She had a mass of debts from culinary school; the Navy would pay off those debts and was, in addition, a natural stepping stone to the White House. And so, two days after the benefit, she joined the Navy.

  For the first six months her job was cleaning, getting the galleys ready for action. She was in the Chief’s Mess. When the actual cooking started she volunteered for everything. Volunteered for more and more. Work started at four thirty in the morning but she didn’t wait for four thirty; she was determined to work at the White House so she’d get in at three thirty and work till eight in the evening. Her colleagues were expected to make two products a day; Leesa made eight and she made them from scratch (‘because I wanted to work at the White House so bad’). She needed to get above everybody else and worked as hard as she could all day to do so. Then she got the watch-captain’s job which meant, after the preparation and the cooking and the cleaning up, she had to do all the paperwork as well.

  Even though I accept that ambition is, in certain circumstances, a good thing I have always disliked ambitious people. I have an allergic reaction to them. But standing here in the Captain’s galley, leaning on the immaculately cleaned counter, I found myself not only liking Leesa, but rooting for her as though I were listening to the culinary equivalent of a Rocky film, a chef’s version of Barack Obama’s journey to the White House.

  Except it didn’t quite work out that way. The recruiter made a mistake or omitted to do something and the debt repayment to which she was entitled—and which was a major reason for joining up—never happened. By the time this was discovered, at boot camp, it was too late to do anything about it. Except (again), she discovered later (too late), there had been time to do something about it at boot camp but it would have required a lot more effort than the people at boot camp were willing to make. So she still had a ton of student loans and by the time she applied for the White House her debt-to-income ratio was too high. And yet her determination to cook at the White House was undimmed.

  By now—by the time we met in her galley—Leesa’s debt-to-income ratio was in better shape but there was another catch: you can only apply for the White House every three years so she’d have to re-enlist for another four. Which would make a total of nine years in the Navy.

  It was a remarkable story and one which justified, in some serendipitous way, my unprofessional habit of drifting off and thinking of other things. Because now, after all that work, all those long hours of volunteering and dedication, she was going to have to accept things—exactly as my mum and dad always counselled. But how could she accept this? How could she not feel cheat
ed, betrayed by oversights and incompetence—the very things that, as far as I had observed, were so common in civvy street but which the US Navy exhorted its members to eliminate? Especially since, she claimed, this kind of foul-up or oversight with regard to loans was not uncommon. The American paradigm of effort and energy rewarded had turned into a sad story that lacked even the vast and desolate consolation of tragedy. Had I detected something of this in Leesa from the outset? Was that why, contrary to my usual instinct, I had felt such warmth for an openly ambitious person who was so keen to get ahead? Had I seen that this was to be a story of ambition unrewarded and thwarted? If so, perhaps it was a necessary corrective to the gleaming professionalism—perfectionism even—that was such a feature of life on the boat. For all the talk of opportunity and the possibility of advancement the Navy is such a huge and monolithic institution that individuals are bound to get caught up in its regimens with almost no recourse to . . . well, to justice.

  The decision of whether to re-enlist or jump ship was a source of torment for Leesa. She had three months to go. If she decided to get out then she would try to work in Paris, and then perhaps move back to San Francisco. I was so touched by the injustice of what had happened that I started saying something about Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. Seeing Leesa’s eyes light up at the mention of this famous restaurant I somewhat overtook myself and instead of saying that I knew someone who worked there, as one of Alice Waters’s assistants, I claimed to know Alice herself (whom I had never met) and that I would do whatever I could to see if there were any openings there. It wasn’t just boasting and name-dropping, though it was a little of both. I was still fired up by Stonewall’s speech and wanted to do something to help, to watch her back, to stop things (it) being what they (it) were (is—or was).

  After a somewhat delirious swirl in which a future job at Chez Panisse seemed not just possible but almost guaranteed we focused again on the here and now, on what the Captain wanted from his cook. ‘Be creative and go crazy’ were his words, which was great for Leesa. Especially since he was so easy to cook for. He liked good food.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ I said and the conversation turned to the poor quality of food available elsewhere on deck. I had trouble with that food, I said. Did she feel that if she was in charge she could do something to improve the quality of the food which I was having such trouble with, such terrible trouble. I did not look particularly pitiful as I said this, I had no ulterior motive in mind, I was definitely not trying to take advantage, in any way whatsoever, of the Chez Panisse carrot—the organic, locally grown, heirloom carrot—that I had dangled tantalizingly in front of Leesa a few minutes earlier; I was not angling for any kind of dinner invite, but the fact of the matter is that Leesa’s next words were among the nicest I heard in the course of my stay on the boat, putting in the shade Stonewall’s frankly overwrought oratory. These words were: ‘Would you like some food?’ The way the emphasis fell in her question—not ‘would you like some food?’ but ‘would you like some food?’, as if the idea of food had been introduced into the conversation by me and it was up to her to respond in any way she pleased as long as it was with reference to food—suggested that I maybe had been working some kind of angle, albeit unconsciously. Now that the cat was out of the bag I was fully conscious and felt no inhibitions about seizing the opportunity.

  ‘Fuck, yeah!’ I said, followed by a half-hearted and thoroughly implausible, ‘if it’s not too much trouble.’ But what could be too much trouble—what difference did one extra dinner make—for someone who had worked fifteen hours a day in the hope that it would land her a job at the White House or Chez Panisse? And it really was no trouble, it seemed, as she set to work rehabilitating leftovers from this evening’s dinner.

  ‘It’ll be seared chicken breast with grilled zucchini and a port wine reduction.’

  ‘That sounds OK,’ I said. ‘Now tell me about the specials.’ I was in a superb mood suddenly, a gloating mood as the galley filled with the clank of pans and the smell of lovely food being prepared for me alone. Yes, for me alone. Paul wasn’t getting a look in. Not a taste. He had absolutely gorged himself on the crap they were serving down in that toilet they called the Ward Room. Ha ha! No wonder he stood there looking so down in the mouth, an expression that redoubled my anticipated pleasure.

  While my dinner was being prepared I continued to ask Leesa whether she thought she could turn around the quality of food available for the boat as a whole but, to be honest, I wasn’t really interested. All of my attention was focused on my meal and so, when it was served, was Paul’s.

  ‘Oh, man . . . ’ he said, looking totally crushed, as I surveyed my plate.

  ‘Remember what Stonewall said earlier,’ I said. ‘You watch my back . . . and I’ll tuck in. Bon appétit, Ensign Newell.’

  Although I tucked in I made sure I tucked in slowly. I moaned and went, ‘Hmm, delicious’ the whole time. And although I was joking about Paul not being able to eat any of it at some level my enjoyment was enhanced by what I saw—reverting to a word that had come to mind a few minutes earlier—as the simple justice of the situation. It was so obvious to me that I deserved this meal more than anyone else on the boat, that no one else had suffered from the bad food—the appalling food—as intensely as I had. And the Captain, I realized now, had been a little economical with the truth of his leadership principles. ‘Eat after they have eaten’ should have been followed by ‘Eat way better than they ever could!’ The chicken was tender and moist, and subtle and full of different flavours. I even crunched through a few bones but they felt tender too.

  ‘That was amazing,’ I said when I was done. It was as if Leesa and I had just finished having noisy sex and I’d rolled over, totally sated by the experience. There was even cake for dessert but I felt so stuffed I wrapped up half of it in a napkin and stashed it away for later. My shrunken belly was taut as a beachball. I thought of Stonewall and his great speech and how happy and proud he’d felt earlier in the day. I had my own room to sleep in and had just scarfed down a delicious meal made by the Captain’s cook. I hadn’t saved anyone’s life or made a speech, but I’d made some wisecracks and I was happy with the meal I’d eaten and was feeling immensely pleased with myself and the way everything had worked out. Stonewall’s doubtless was a higher kind of happiness, but his was not available to me, and mine, more to the point, was not available to him—and my belly was full to bursting with it.

  And still this epic day had (a little) more to offer. The Captain had intended showing a movie up on deck, beneath the stars. That plan had to be abandoned: it had become too windy and the screen would have acted like a sail. A shame. I had no desire to see Pirates of the Caribbean part three—even more idiotic, presumably, than the first two in the series—but I would have enjoyed strolling round the starlit deck, watching people watching the movie. Instead, the movie was being shown in the hangar bay.

  It was packed down there, with people on fold-up chairs or just sitting cross-legged on the floor, munching popcorn, cheering at the appropriate moments, gazing at the gigantic screen with its view of ships on a blue film of sea.

  39

  The next night Paul got in on the act too. He went up to Leesa’s galley to see if any leftovers were available for me and came back to my room with a plate for himself as well. We both tucked in to these enormous portions of salmon and pasta. Yum. It was fantastic. It was tasty. It had flavours, it was tender. Paul had to leave as soon as we had finished tucking in and so, for dessert, I tucked in to the cake that I had squirreled away the night before. I was supposed to be here as some kind of reporter but I had ended up living like a castaway or hostage, a hostage who had been kidnapped by himself and was, as a consequence, developing a peculiarly intense and rare form of Stockhausen syndrome.

  You see the state I was in? I meant Stockholm syndrome but maybe it was Stockhausen syndrome (whatever that is) that I was actually suffering from. I chortled to myself as I tucked in to my ca
ke and felt my tummy growing taut as a beachball again, an even bigger beachball than it had been the previous day. I must let the world know what has happened to me, I said to myself, must write a message, seal it in a bottle and find a way of chucking the bottle overboard when no one is looking—especially the Captain. Mayday, it would read. Jump the swimmer! I am Beachbelly, writer-in-residence aboard the USS Stockhausen. I am a hostage on the USS Stockhausen. I am the internationally renowned author of the Helikopter Streichquartett and a bloated bildungsroman called Swimming the Jumper. The more I said USS Stockhausen and Beachbelly to myself the more I chortled and the happier I felt. That I found this incredibly funny may itself have been a classic symptom of Stockhausen syndrome, I said to myself as I sat there in my room, abundantly happy, bloated and chortling away like there was no tomorrow.

  40

  There really was almost no tomorrow—or only a couple of them, anyway. In two days I would be gone—and, as a result, I succumbed to my own version of the gate fever that begins afflicting the crew near the end of their deployment. I kept fearing that my name was not on the list for the Greyhound (it was; I checked twice), that the flight would be cancelled or that there would be an accident and it would crash with me on board (this last was the least of my fears; at least I would not be inconvenienced). I also worried—after the near loss of my exercise book on the flight in—that my baggage would somehow be mislaid. The details don’t matter except insofar as (that phrase again!) they proved that I was desperate to get off the boat. I’d had one of the great experiences of my life, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world—and I couldn’t wait for it to be over with.