“Oh, I couldn’t do that . . . it wouldn’t be right . . . honest . . .”
I lost my patience. “Well, all right then, Amyas, as senior partner in the Cupling and Jones Dreadnaught Salvage Company, which hereafter will be considered dissolved, and as director in charge of finance, I’m paying you your fee for your advice in the firm’s recent operations and also a bonus upon your retirement . . . OK?”
Amyas’ face drew itself up into a certain dignity. The mustache ends curled up. His eyes brightened. “That sounds reasonable enough, as it were,” he said. “How much is it?”
“Thirty-one thousand, three hundred pesetas. Here, sign this receipt, please; then I can close the company books.”
I wrote a receipt on another piece of toilet paper, Amyas signed it, and thus was dissolved the shortest-lived salvage company ever.
Amyas said, “Don’t forget, bring your lady friend to dinner next week.”
“When we get back from Formentera, Amyas,” I said.
Sissie was back in the late forenoon. “Yoo-hoo, Tristan dahling!”
I heard her voice from the otherwise deserted jetty. Nelson growled softly. I put down my book of verse—Paradise Lost.
I helped her onboard. She was still in her rose-bestrewn finery. Her eyes glowed like new Barlow sheet winches. “Deah Tristan!” she bellowed, as I grabbed her arm. “How did you manage without me?”
“Oh, it was a bit rough, but we managed it somehow.” I took her parcels.
She was glowing, excited, as she passed down the companionway. “Theahs a present for you, dahling Tristan!” she yelled, “and one for deah dahling Nelson . . .”
Nelson glowered at her. Sissie turned around slightly, rocking the boat. Her eyes stabbed at the stove. Three pans, treacherously littered with the remnants of kidney, liver, fish, and chips betrayed me. “Oh you poor deah. Just look at this bally old galley . . . Simply awf’ly mmm . . . Well, I s’pose you’ve been terribly busy while Ai’ve been away, dahling?” She plonked her parcels on the spare berth.
“Bit of reading. Filled the water tanks,” I replied.
“Heah . . .” Sissie handed me an envelope. “A month’s chartah fee. Three thousand, five hundred pesetas dahling.”
“Thanks, Sissie. That’ll keep us going until I get another delivery. By the way, Willie get away all right?”
“Oh, absolutely. He bumped into one of his curates in Palma airport. They traveled back togethah.” She ripped my present open.
“How delightful for the curate,” I said.
“Spiffing!” she said, as she handed me a red-and-blue-striped tie.
“Just what I needed—thank you, Sissie!” I gasped as she pecked my cheek.
“I simply knew you’d like it,” she murmured.
In calm or storm, in rain and shine,
The shellback doesn’t mind,
On the ocean swell he’ll work like hell,
For the girl he left behind.
He beats it north, he runs far south,
He doesn’t get much pay,
He’s always on a losing game,
Chorus: And that’s the Sailor’s Way.
Main chorus: Then it’s goodbye my little Marie,
We’re off to sea again.
Sailor Jack always comes back
To the girl he’s left behind!
—from “The Sailor’s Way”
This is a capstan and pump chantey, but it was also sung as a “fore-bitter,” that is, even when work was not being done—which was rare. This chantey is unique in that the haulers joined in singing the last line of the verse along with the chanteyman.
12. The Sailor’s Way
“So how were things in Majorca, Sissie?” I asked, as she fondly showed Nelson a new bright-red doggie bowl she’d bought for him. Nelson softly growled at her and the bowl as though it were poisoned.
“Oh, simply spiffing! Deah Willie, of course, just as you said, dahling, didn’t like Palma much, but then neither do Ai. All the bally noise and the dreary traffic, and all those simply dreadful little hotels going up. Oh deah . . .” Sissie’s forehead creased as she closed her eyes and shook her shoulders. Then her eyes sprang open, and she was British again. “Tea, dahling?”
She didn’t wait for a reply. Kettle in hand, she went on. “And those ebsolutely peasanty little men on the street—shocking! Honestly, dahling, one would think they’d nevah seen a woman before, the way they carry on . . . so persistent, I mean—so awf’ly bally boring! Poor deah Willie hardly knew what to do.”
“They weren’t chatting him up, were they?” My eyes must have gleamed.
“Oh, no . . . Well, hardly . . .” She frowned for a moment, then half-apologetically smiled. “Well, not until we got on thet dreadful omnibus to Pollensa. Willie did so awf’ly want to see deah Robert Graves’ charming villa, and this shocking harridan—I mean she was antediluvian, my deah—sat next to us. She was from one of those simply obscure Scandinavian places that awful chep Ibsen used to write about, and she was dragging around this poor little—well, you reahlly couldn’t say cheppie, dahling—person, who looked sort of terribly prole, and he was so pimply . . . and his purple shirt!”
I grinned over my tea mug. “Don’t tell me he felt Willie’s knee?”
“Well, my deah Tristan, ectually Ai don’t know what happened. You see Ai was too dreadfully preoccupied stopping this dratted cockerel—it was in a bawsket undah the bally seat in front of me—from pecking at mai jolly old feet. But quite suddenly deah Willie simply insisted on stopping the blessed omnithing and alighting—I mean, dahling, right out in the middle of nowheah.” Sissie’s eyes crinkled as if in pain. “And we had to get a sort of lift in this ancient farmlorry, and when we arrived, dreadfully exhausted, we found thet deah Robert Graves was away. Awf’ly naice villa, though . . . oodles of palm trees and things . . .”
“So you got back to Palma—then what?”
“Well, my deah, it was long awftah midnight when the omnithing finally oozed back to the city, and deah Willie and I couldn’t find a taxi-cab, and we had to jolly well plod all the way back to the bally hotel, and all these ghastly little men simply scurrying the streets and all these dreadful hussies loitering about. It was all so sort of primeval, rawther like something out of one of those terrible continental opera-things, you know?”
“Carmen?”
“Ebsolutely!” she exclaimed. “Oh, deah Tristan, how simply clevah of you!”
Sissie gazed at the picture of the Queen for a moment, then said, quietly, “It was rancidly un-supah, my pet, and deah Willie was so dreadfully upset, and I had to almost smothah him to jolly well prevent him from dragging some of those sordid little hussies along to a restaurant for sup-pah, and all the bally while these simply beastly little men were sort of breathing at me! Finally one of those awf’ly naice policemen of theahs trotted along and escorted us back to our hotel . . . Oh, deah!”
I was smiling to myself. “What’s up now, lass?”
“Oh, why do those little cheps do it? Ai mean, it’s not as if theah were no sort of awf’ly jolly decent gals around, is it?”
“That’s one of the oldest questions around, Sissie. Anyway, I wouldn’t wonder at the bloke who does that now and again. If I were you, I’d wonder at the feller who doesn’t.”
Even as I said that, Lieutenant Francisco climbed onboard Cresswell. I called to him to come on down. He descended and saw Sissie, who still looked pained. I introduced Sissie to Francisco. He clicked his heels together at the bottom of the ladder, gently took hold of Sissie’s brown, calloused, and wilting hand, raised it delicately as he bowed, and lightly brushed it with his lips. Sissie almost dissolved into the paintwork.
“Señora, I am at your feet, enchanted,” murmured the young officer. Sissie was too breathless to say a word. She seemed somehow to hang in space as her Bo
edicea-blue eyes glazed at him and her mouth fell half open.
In his fairly good English Francisco said, “Señor Tristan, the Mother at the orphanage is ready to receive you, and begs that you and your friend Amyas . . . and the señora, I hope . . .” (he flashed sex and slavery at Sissie, who almost moaned in a transport of feminine fluster) “ . . . will join her and her staff for lunch at one o’clock?”
“Of course we will,” I replied. (Never turn down comestibles and booze.) “Delighted, Francisco. Will you be coming, too?”
“I have that signal honor, señor,” he said.
Sissie suddenly remembered that she was British. “Would you like tea, Lieutenant?” she purred breathlessly.
“Señora, your tea will be to me as the drink of the gods,” said Francisco, as full of Spanish flannel as a Ganges blanket.
Sissie smiled weakly at him. She glowed in a subtle way; her Saxon reaction to his Iberian charm oozed out of her like red-gleaming iron slag seeping out of a Bessemer blast-furnace. I studied her face for a moment as she stood over the teapot. Her eyes were half-closed. There was a dreamy smile on her lips, and her dumpy chest heaved as she reached one hand up to pat her frizzy ginger hair.
Of course the cat was coming out of the bag, now. Francisco would tell Sissie the tale of Dreadnaught—well laced with Hispanic charm and decorated with Castilian embroidery. Now that Sissie was under the spell of a real charmer, deah, dahling Skippah could go to pot. I silently slid up the ladder and headed for Amyas and Dreadnaught, to collect the engineer-poet and bring him back for lunch at the orphanage. I left Francisco to put Sissie au fait with the stirring tale of Dreadnaught’s demise and resurrection, and to drink “the drink of the gods.”
“ . . . best Burma tea, from Fortnum and Mason’s,” I heard Sissie purring as I jumped onto the jetty.
An hour later, at the orphanage, where we arrived in Francisco’s navy jeep, about fifty kids were lined up to greet us, with four nuns in command. The kids were all ages, from about two up to twelve or so; boys and girls, all dressed in blue uniforms. The girls’ gym-slips reminded me of Sissie’s. But it was a sad moment as we passed them, at least for me, even though the kids were dutifully smiling and looking their best. The Reverend Mother was gracious and more than grateful for the money which was handed over. I had left it to Francisco to do this, as I thought it would be less embarrassing for the Mother to accept it from the Spanish navy, and from a Catholic, than from we Britons—an Anglican, a Calvinist, and a . . . a delivery skipper.
The meal we had was simple—a salad, broiled fish, potatoes, and afterward a custard pudding. The wine was excellent—a vintage Marques de Riscal. The table had no cloth; the plates and glasses were set out on its clean, well-scrubbed top. The meal was served by older girl-orphans, who looked, although serious-faced, contented with the honor. They did not seem awed by the Reverend Mother at all—in fact their demeanor reminded me of my own sisters’ attitude toward our mother, so long before in Merioneth.
The hall where the meal was taken was, surprisingly to me, starkly simple. It was a long, whitewashed place, with a high roof supported by massive timbers. The only decoration was a small, dark wooden cross on one wall. The windows were set high, and were clear glass, through which sunbeams streamed.
At first the conversation was a little stilted. Only the Mother, among the nuns, spoke English, and so we managed as best we could in Castilian, with me trying to interpret for Sissie. After a short Latin grace the Mother was effusive in her gratitude, but I told her she should reserve it for the little general, and that the wooden beams above our heads reminded me of a ship’s timbers.
“True enough, Captain Jones. They came from the ships of the Moors, which were sunk here in the harbor in the early fifteenth century,” the Mother replied.
“Of course they were great sailors, the Arabs,” joined in Amyas, whose Spanish was excellent. “They were the first, really, to manage to head more or less into the wind . . .” He hesitated. I figured that he was trying to think of a Spanish equivalent for “as it were.” Then he went on. “Of course, we invented steam, though. Good job, really—otherwise we’d probably be speaking Arabic now . . .”
And so we sailors, ignoring Hero of Alexandria, got the conversation rolling, and Amyas managed to mention just about every Spanish shipbuilding yard and engineer of note from the past hundred years of so. After a while the Mother happened to remark that the orphanage water-pump was not functioning too well, so Amyas and I spent a good hour in the cellar after lunch, taking the pump to bits and fitting it with new glands, which Amyas cut from an old leather belt.
As he worked away dexterously he said, “Your lady friend is quite . . . charming, as it were, old chap.”
“Sissie’s glad to be back from Palma.”
“You didn’t mention anything yet? I mean what we talked about yesterday . . . about her coming onboard Dreadnaught?”
“No, haven’t had a chance yet, Amyas.”
He looked relieved. “Good, I’m glad,” he said, as he tapped a washer home around the pump shaft. “I wouldn’t want her to see Dreadnaught until she’s a bit more . . . cozy, as it were.”
There was silence for a moment, except for the tapping of the hammer. Then I said “I think you’re right, Amyas. I’ll talk to her . . . no, a better idea is if we wait until we see you again when we return from Formentera. I can put up with her for another week or so. No sense in rushing, mate.”
“No. We ought to be a bit diplomatic. After all, she is a woman. Have to be a bit diplomatic with ’em. Funny creatures . . . Don’t want to let her think we’re arranging things for her, as it were . . .”
I didn’t get a chance to reply. Francisco and Sissie and the Reverend Mother all trooped into the cellar.
“Such delightfully sweet children,” gushed Sissie. “Oh, what a dreadful pity you and Amyas couldn’t see them at theah lunch—so awf’ly well-behaved. Oh what a ghastly shame deah Willie and dahling Miss Benedict couldn’t have . . .”
Amyas switched on the pump. It worked perfectly. A mere perspiration of water from the shaft glands, just as it should have been. The pump whined away as Sissie’s voice faded. The Reverend Mother beamed as she handed Amyas, Sissie, Francisco, and me a tiny silver crucifix each. I still have mine.
On the way back to the harbor in the navy jeep, in between Francisco’s charming the pants almost off Sissie, I told her that we were sailing for Formentera again the next day. “Too bloody dirty in Ibiza harbor. I’ve cleaned the waterline about ten times since we arrived here, and it’s almost as bad now as it was yesterday. I’ve only to fix the new bowsprit on and Cresswell will be all ready.”
Sissie somehow managed to drag her eyes and attention away from Francisco. She grabbed my arm as the jeep bounced along into the lower town. “Oh, dahling, Ai’m so glad. Ai’m ebsolutely, awf’ly thrilled!”
“What about?” I asked. I had thought she would have been sorry to leave Ibiza while there was a possibility of Francisco coming onboard.
“Oh, deah . . . Ai’ve been so frightfully fretting . . . in a dreadful, awful . . . reahlly a paroxysm of . . . anxiety, dahling.”
“Oh?” I wracked my brain about this for a moment as the whitewashed walls flashed by. Then I gave up. “Why?”
Sissie turned her head, her hair flying in the wind. Her eyes were damp. She patted my arm. “Oh, silly old me!” she cried. “Ai do get these dreadful turns . . . Ai reahlly don’t know what to say, my pet . . .”
“Come on, Sissie, for Chrissake, what’s biting you? Is it something here in Ibiza? Is it some bloke getting on your wick?”
She half-laughed, and slapped my arm harder now. “Oh, no. It’s . . .” She left the rest unsaid.
“What the heck is it, then?”
“It’s poor, dahling Miss Pomeroy!” she burst out. “Ai simply cawn’t get her out of my mind. To think of her in t
he grubby hands of thet great, hulking beastly fellow, thet dreadful foreign brute! After all, she is British, dahling!”
This was a new one on me. I saw in my mind’s eye the tiny blue-rinsed children’s author. All I could say was, “Well, girl, you pays your money and you makes your choice,” but by the time I’d managed to roll that one out, Sissie was smiling again.
“Ai shell go to see her as soon as evah we’re back in Formentera.”
She said it as if she were Queen Victoria ordering out the Guards, so I knew it was useless to argue further, and kept quiet while Francisco craftily worked his magic on the Dragon of Devon all the way back to the jetty.
We were alone again onboard Cresswell by the time I popped The Question to Sissie. I did it as casually as a sailor could. “How do you like Amyas, then?”
She dumped the supper potatoes into a bucket, violently. “Oh, what a dreadful, boring little man! I sweah I couldn’t understand a word he said. All sorts of piston rods and . . . What was it—bally gudgeon bars? Ai’m sure it must have simply tired out thet awf’ly sweet Mothah Superior merely trying to comprehend what the dickens he was talking about. I know it did me, dreadfully.”
I made my way forward to fit Cresswell’s new bowsprit. Nelson softly padded along the deck behind me. Both our hearts sank. Albion’s daughter was staying with us for a while yet. That was obvious. But so, often, go the best-laid plans of mice and men—and dogs, too, we reflected as, hissing into my teeth, I viciously reamed out a new bolt-hole in Cresswell’s foredeck and Nelson sadly looked on. We both knew now that Amyas was going to remain alone for quite a while.
Our voyage to Formentera was short in mileage but tall in experience. Ibiza harbor was calm when we left it, and so were the first couple of miles south, but when Cresswell cleared the southern point of Ibiza island, and rounded into the channel north of Espalmador, we found a strong southwest wind—hard enough to blow the devil’s socks off. In the narrow, shallow channel, it piled up steep seas. It made them crowd together, impatient to shove past one another so as to reach the deeps to the east. Of course, as the seas shoved each other, and those in the rear cried “Forward!” and those in the front called “Back!” quite a furor was created in the strait, and it took poor old Cresswell, who could only sail up to about sixty degrees off the blind eye of the wind, about three hours of bash-and-crash-through, slide-and-glide-off, and hammer-and-stammer-into-and-over the charging ranks of watery panic, to get through.
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