I pointed my thumb at a round wooden box lying on the stone floor of the bodega. It was a quarter-full of dried codfish, set out neatly, their mahogany-colored bodies overlapping each other, all looking extremely sorry for themselves. “We can have some yellow peril here.” Dried cod was about the cheapest food in Spain at the time—about five cents per whole bony corpse.
“Oh, that will be nice,” said Sissie as Antonio, the ancient proprietor, in shirtsleeves, his grubby white apron drooping all the way down to his ankles, approached our table.
I ordered our breakfast, then, and Antonio shuffled away in his incredibly tattered carpet slippers. I looked at my watch. “By the time we’ve finished this little lot it will be time to go to the post office. Why don’t you come with me?”
Again Sissie’s hand descended gently on my forearm. “Oh, dahling, thet will be supah. Oh, goody, goody gum-drops,” she chortled. Then, after a moment’s reflection, which she signified by staring into mid-space, her North Sea eyes opened as wide as she could manage, she said, “Ai say, Skippah, what terrific cheps they are onboard the catamaran. They told me they are to stay in Ibiza for several days . . .”
“Then why didn’t you go onboard their boat for a shower and use their bloody fresh water instead of ours?” I queried.
“Oh, dahling, I simply couldn’t jolly-well go onboard a boat alone with two cheps . . .”
“Oh, well . . . only natural, I s’pose,” I grunted, thinking of the diminishing water in Cresswell’s tanks. Another thirty gallons would cost another thirty pesetas (about eighty cents).
As Sissie strode, Nelson limped, and I traipsed along Ibiza’s waterfront, the sun again broke through the high clouds and gold-plated the cathedral and fortress atop the steep hill to our left. Across the harbor, on the east side, another heavy rainstorm reminded me of the eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt not loiter ashore too long when dirty weather is in the offing.”
Sissie gazed up at the gold-lined clouds above us. “Just like a jolly old Gainsborough painting!” she gurgled, as she clomped heavily among the heaps of lobster pots, fishing nets, sacks of potatoes, and other ‘heaps of bric-a-brac,’ as she called the means of livelihood of a hundred hardworking souls.
“Hammerheads,” I replied, glancing up at the clouds, black-bellied and menacing. “Going to be a right bloody gale later on. We’d better not hang around too much. We’ll have to keep a good watch on the anchor—otherwise we’re going to be bashing the rudder against the jetty again, and I’ve only just finished repairing it from the hammering we got last week.”
At the correos there were two letters for Sissie; one from her brother the bishop (dahling Willie) and one from deah Toby, the ex-majah, who was now assistant station-mawstah at Victorloo in London. For me there was one telegram.
We made for the Hotel Montesol, in the main square of Ibiza. There we sat at an outside table in the fleeting sunshine and sipped sweet coffee. I ripped open my telegram.
“GOOD DELIVERY JOB FOR YOU PLUS ONE MATE MALAGA STOP MEET ME HOTEL LA PRINCESA TEA TIME TUESDAY STOP SHINER.”
“Good news, I hope, Skippah?” murmured Sissie, watching me anxiously. Always ripe for a touch of drama, was Sissie. She laid her hand on my arm.
“Yes, looks like it. Probably a boat delivery from Malaga. It’s from my old mate Shiner Wright. He doesn’t say how long it’ll be, but I doubt if it will be more than a couple of days—at this time of year it’s probably some nob wants his gin-palace taken to Gibraltar. So what about if you look after the boat and Nelson for me . . .” Nelson, at the sound of his name, bumped his tail against my leg under the table . . . “and I’ll split the delivery proceeds twenty-five, seventy-five with you when I get back.”
Sissie squeezed my arm suddenly, like a bosun’s mate grabbing a marlinspike. “Oh, dahling Skippah, thet won’t be at all necessary—you know I’d do it anyway.”
As she said this she noticed a Spanish cavalry officer passing along the street verge in front of the hotel, only six feet away from us. The officer was leading a beautiful white horse by its bridle. Sissie screwed up her Spithead-blue eyes, pursed her lips, and smiled at the horse. The cavalry officer leered lecherously at Sissie. A blue-overcoated, white-helmeted traffic policeman on the corner of the square, a dozen yards away from us, halted the traffic. The horse halted and, as the officer still returned Sissie’s smiles with muy macho poses, the horse relieved its bowels right in front of a group of camera-aiming, Bermuda-shorted, Hawaii-shirted American tourists, who, after the first spluttered shocks, were hurled back, bespattered, all around our table.
The traffic, the macho officer, and the horse moved off again, and the Americans shouted for “more Kleenex, goddamit!” The non-English-speaking waiters merely stood and grinned politely. I gently lifted Sissie’s hand from my arm. “Come on, mate, we’d better get our shopping done before this storm works up.”
By noon we had all our morning chores completed onboard Cresswell and by twelve-thirty we were spruced up to go onboard the catamaran for lunch. This means that I had changed from my working jeans into my only other pair of pants—corduroys, which were reasonably clean, and Sissie had exchanged her seaboots for her ditchdigger’s brogues, which were once again dry after the thorough scrubbing she had given them earlier that morning.
As we approached the catamaran, Sissie sang out, “Bellerophon ahoy, can we come aboard?”
Two voices replied from down below—the gruff, low voice and the high, choir-boy’s voice. “Yes, do come, we’re almost ready. And take off your shoes, please!”
Sissie and I clambered over one of the sterns of the catamaran and entered the spacious cabin, which extended almost the full beam of the boat—about sixteen feet. This, after Cresswell’s cabin width of six feet, was a bit like comparing No. 10, Downing Street, with the White House.
Inside the cabin was a prospect I shall never forget. All around the windows there were chintz curtains, all flower-patterned with roses and such. On every horizontal surface, or so it seemed, there was a small vase decorated with plastic flowers, roses and such. The inside surfaces of the cabin were decorated with flowery wallpaper, all roses and such, while the cabin sole (or deck) was covered with a rose-patterned carpet. It was a bit like being in a flower-nursery greenhouse. There were roses everywhere.
As my senses recovered from the visual shock, I was now in for an aural shock. Billy, whose voice of course I immediately recognized, called up from inside the galley, which was lower than the main cabin, in one of the hulls.
“Welcome aboard, old chap,” I heard him say. I turned, expecting to see a biggish, burly man of about thirty-five. Instead, to both Sissie’s and my instant confusion, a most attractive woman of around twenty-eight or so, clad in a flowery dress—roses and such—tripped lightly up the small ladder, grabbed hold of Sissie (who later told me she was too astonished to move), kissed her on the cheek, and held her hand!
Billie had medium-length dark hair and beautiful blue eyes, and was very attractive indeed by any standards. Then Tony appeared. Instead of a choir-boy-like adolescent of about fifteen, which both Sissie and I expected to encounter, we were confronted by a slight, balding man of about forty-eight, wearing thick-rimmed spectacles and stooping with the weight of responsibilities which only captains know. (Either that or his sleeping berth was too short for his length, which was about six feet, two inches.)
After we had shaken hands with Tony and mouthed pleasantries, I again looked around the cabin of Bellerophon and saw then one of the strangest things I’ve ever come across in a small sailing craft. Fitted right across the forward end of the cabin was a full-scale, pedal-operated chapel organ, complete with pipes and stops, bellows and knobs, and all sorts of paraphernalia. I stared for a full two minutes at the organ, then turned to see Tony, his head bent as he stooped under the cabin roof, grinning hugely at me. “You like music, eh?” he asked.
; “Well . . . a bit of classical stuff. You know, Brahms, Beethoven, stuff like that,” I replied.
Quickly Tony, who I now noticed had bird-like movements, sat himself down on the stool in front of the organ and started pedaling away at the bellows, all the while grinning at me. “You’ll like this one,” he said. “Always start the day off with this one.” He stopped pedaling for a second or two. “Guess what it is?”
I tried to look nonplused; and so I was, not at Tony’s question but by the whole lunatic-seeming scene. Here was a six-foot-odd giant with a choir-boy’s voice, and a sister who sounded like a regimental sergeant-major and looked like a Hollywood star, sitting at an organ onboard the ugliest sailing vessel I had ever seen. I shook myself from my reverie. “You’ve got me,” I said. “Handel’s Water Music?”
Tony again commenced to pedal madly. Then he suddenly threw his head back, thrust his hands out in front of him, fingers outstretched and quivering with intensity. Violently he drew out some stops, stretched his arms out again, like a conjuror showing he has nothing up his sleeves, and plunged into the keyboard. As the notes blared out of the organ, both he, in his piping treble, and his sister Billie, in a fine, ringing bass, accompanied the music . . . Rule Britannia!
Halfway through the first verse I turned to Sissie. She was still holding hands with Billie, who stood at attention as she bellowed out the words. Sissie was gazing at me in seeming adoration. Hardly able to stop myself from bursting out in hysterical laughter, I ambled over to one of the huge cabin windows, eased aside one of the chintz curtains, and stared out over the harbor of Ibiza, now rainswept again, and wondered how the devil anyone could ever have thought that I was slightly crazy.
When at last the organ stopped wheezing and groaning the overture, Billie and Sissie stepped down into the galley. Together, as Tony played a selection from “The Merry Widow,” they prepared a delectably tasty lunch of pate, ham, and salad, with Spanish wine.
There was no more work done that day, either in Bellerophon or in Cresswell. All afternoon, after the dishes had been cleared up by Billie and Sissie, and as Tony the Specs huffed, pedaled, and pounded like mad on the organ, the women and I lounged in the spacious cabin of the catamaran in between hoisting full bottles of red and white wine out of the cool stowage in the bilge below the stainless steel galley sink, and adding to the pile of empty wine bottles just outside the cabin door.
During the afternoon we hailed all of our neighbors in the boats tied up at the town jetty. Several of them came onboard Bellerophon, ostensibly to listen to the organ music, but in reality to assist in easing the weight of fifty bottles of wine which, we all agreed, if left low in the boat would surely impair her ability to go efficiently to windward.
It was a cosmopolitan crowd that gathered. There was Willy the German; Rory O’Boggarty the Irish Writer, looking like a very young G.B. Shaw; two Italians, who could barely drag their eyes away from the lovely Billie; a Turkish doctor, who soon had Sissie oohing and aahing over the ancient Hittite civilization and the effects of too much freedom for women; a tall Dutch lady who had once been the lover of Gurdjieff (so she said—and she looked it); a short, benevolent-looking elderly gentleman, whom I later discovered owned a steel factory in Johannesburg which manufactured manacles for the South African government; and an internationally renowned Danish pop singer and his beautiful but very hard-faced wife. (There was something a little strange about both their “Danish” accents. I was later told that he was actually an ex-Nazi Hitler Youth and she was a retired whore from Surrey Hills, Sydney, Australia!)
To relieve the weight of this company there were also the Frenchman and the Finn who had rescued Sissie earlier that day from a death worse than fate. But as the evening came on, and Sissie busied herself washing fresh glasses for wine, the events of the morning were completely forgotten as the wind outside howled and the rain lashed down on Bellerophon’s decks about us and above our heads, and the catamaran yawed and swerved to her anchor, and Tony the Specs still pedaled away at the ship’s organ with demoniacal fury.
All the while this infernal scene was being played out, I was thinking about my forthcoming delivery job. I needed a mate to go with me. The only men present who might need to earn money were the Frenchman and the Finn. I broached the matter to both of them, separately. Neither of them wanted to come; the Frenchman was the skipper of a large Italian motor yacht and the Finn was a poet, “too busy writing.”
After an hour’s thought I hied myself over to the organ and sat at Tony’s side. He was still pumping and playing and piping. Over the racket I asked him, “How long have you been sailing, Tony?”
He didn’t look at me—he was too busy pulling and pushing stops. It was “Clair de Lune” now. “Oh, only eight months. We left England last year, but we wintered the boat over in France and rejoined her this spring at Sète.”
“Are you interested in a little sailing trip from Málaga to Gib?” I shouted over the roar and groan of the bass pipes.
He turned and questioned me with his owl-like eyes.
“I’ve got a delivery job. I have to go over to Málaga next week. I earn my living that way, you see . . . and I need a mate, but no one else here wants to go, and the nearest mate I have, apart from Sissie, is Pete Kelly, and he’s up in Monaco . . .”
Suddenly Tony stopped playing. There was a hush in the cabin. “Say no more. You helped us out; I’ll help you out. Put my name down on your bally list, old chap. The cat’ll be safe here . . .”
“And Sissie can lend Billie a hand if she needs it, and Nelson is a good guard dog . . .” I interjected.
“Yes, I’m all for a little side trip, and I love Gibraltar.”
“Then it’s a deal? I’ll split the delivery fee with you, 40 for you and 60 for me, OK?”
Tony grabbed my hand and shook it violently. “Done, old chap.”
Just as suddenly he turned back to the organ and, pumping for all he was worth, started another rendition of “Rule Britannia.”
I turned toward Sissie, who was strenuously fending off the by-now amorous Turk. I nodded my head and winked. She at first raised her eyebrows, then smiled broadly.
Now all the women present were beautiful, elegant, and intelligent; all the men were handsome, debonair, and witty—and only one bottle of wine remained. Soon that, too, was in the pile of empties, placed there gently and precisely by the Finnish poet, who had to be supported by Gurdjieff’s ex-lover, who in turn was supported by Willie the German and Rory O’Boggarty, the savant Son of Erin.
The following Tuesday morning, Tony and I caught the rackety Iberia Dakota plane from Ibiza to Valencia, then another Dakota to the great port-city of Málaga, and made our way in the late afternoon to the Hotel La Princesa.
If either of us had had any idea, any inkling, of what lay ahead of us, we would have caught the first plane back to Ibiza. I might have been forewarned by the following Halloween episode, which occurred shortly before our departure . . .
Death, be not proud, though some have calléd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee must go—
Rest of their bones and soul’s delivery!
Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!
“Death”—John Donne
2. A Grave Matter
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The morning after the party onboard Bellerophon, Sissie and I left Nelson to guard Cresswell and went ashore to do our daily rounds; she to head for the mail at the post office and I to have a beer at the bodega Antonio, the tiny fisherman’s bar at the head of the town quay. The Alhambra, with its crowd of rogues and sly hucksters, was no place, after all, for a sailor with a hangover. The fishermen, although stern-faced and quiet, were gentle and kind, and understanding of sailors’ ways. With them there would be no accusing stares, no weighing up of wealth, no reckoning of worth, no estimates of proclivities. At Antonio’s I would be a sailor among sailors, and on that October morning that’s all I wanted—peace and quiet and solitude, with a bottle of San Miguel beer to stiffen me up. As I approached the tiny, low, white-washed bodega, with its usual crew of ancient mariners outside, silently scrutinizing and supervising the activities in the harbor, Sissie, bless her, silently gave me a cheery wave and a smile and, with her raffia shopping bag slung over her shoulder, steamed off along the main waterfront. As usual her wake was marked by a scattering of children and chickens and the turning heads of a few male idlers. Previous to her appearance the men had been loitering on the quay; but now, as her electric ginger hair and bare thighs flashed by, they almost sprang to attention, Sissie steering among them like the Royal Yacht sailing between lines of minor fleet-craft at a naval review.
Antonio, who always looked as if he’d never been to bed, board, or bath in his life, bobbed his head as I ducked mine to pass through the low door. “Café, Señor?”
“No, por el amor de Dios—CERVEZA, Antonio! For the love of God, a beer,” I replied as I peered around the gloomy room and felt my way to one of the tiny tables.
“Mornin’ Cap’n Jones!”
The voice was flat, tinny, Irish, and sounded as if it were being transmitted over a long-distance telephone line. I knew right away it was Rory O’Boggarty, the lounging literatus, the erudite Eriner, the impecunious imp, the poor man’s Bernard Shaw. He was usually to be found at Antonio’s at an early hour, the mid-day hour, and the very late hour, with a virgin-lined notebook and a bottle of beer in front of him. Rory was a martyr to the writer’s occupational hazards—the need for solitude and solace, company and conversation, privacy and prey—all at the same time. His voice signaled on: “ . . . and how’re the barnacles and binnacles today?”
Seagulls in My Soup Page 2