Seagulls in My Soup

by Tristan Jones

  Naturally, all this was right up Sissie’s street. She stayed at my side as I heaved and strained at the wheel, beating Cresswell first this way, then that, against the wind, stealing a few yards each time we made a short “board”—each time we made first a zig, then a zag, with the boat rising and dropping down eight feet every four seconds and Nelson panting down my neck as he lay secure on the poop, watching for dolphins. Sissie was in her element in this kind of thing—the “juicy bits,” she called it. A sort of orgasmic idiocy crept over her face as she squinted against the flying spray. “Oh, jolly, jolly dee! Oh, happy, happy day!” she yelled, as another maverick sea picked up Cresswell’s bow and flung her to one side with contempt and almost wrenched the wheel out of my straining arms. “Oh, lucky, lucky me!” she crowed, as yet another piled-up lump of green, watery malevolence rose ahead in vicious obduracy, up, up, up . . . and Cresswell humped the shoulders of her mainsail and girded the loins of her bows for the shock, and as the emerald monster grew before us in the light of the sun behind us, until we stared up at it, until it loomed—a great, lumbering, beautiful bully, which gathered up immense strength in the blue-black heart of it, curling slightly—and smashed down on our bow, sending great whizzing streams of water slashing aft.

  All the time this went on, as if it had always gone on, and would always go on, for ever and ever, Sissie sang beside my ear . . . “Somewheah, ovah the rainbow . . .”

  After about an hour of this, the lotus-eater in me asked the age-old island-sailor’s question: “Why sail uphill, against the wind, anyway? Why not take it easy and return to a haven downwind and wait for the wind to change direction? Why struggle? Why not do it the easy way?”

  I turned to Sissie. Both of us were wet through, streaming seawater. “This is going to take us bloody hours, getting across this little lot,” I hollered. “I think we should turn tail and hang on in Ibiza for the wind to veer around to the east . . . It’ll be ’round there tomorrow.”

  Sissie’s face dropped. She frowned at me. She looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her in the wind, with the main and mizzen drumming away like steam engines and the banging and clattering of the seas. I leaned over and put my ear close to her face.

  “ . . . and I was so looking forward to seeing if Miss Pomeroy was all right . . . and now I shall have to simply fret for anothah beastly night. Oh, deah!”

  “What the hell are you on about?” I yelled at her, and replaced my ear in front of her laughing-gear again, as another sea crashed onboard and we both ducked to dodge the stinging spray.

  “Poor, deah Miss Pomeroy,” she screeched when we rose again. “She’s going to be in the hands of that monstrous, drunken predator!” I heard no more, as another twenty tons of water collapsed onto Cresswell’s bow and scattered itself into a thousand splatters of silvery stabs.

  Moments later, after the boat had recovered from that one, Sissie hollered, a pained look on her face. “Dahling!”

  I thought she was in trouble, somehow—perhaps one of her ribs had been stove in when she had been thrown against the cockpit bulwark a minute ago? I hoped. I leaned toward her again and poked my ear in front of her face.

  “You did promise, you know . . . And I’m so awf’ly worried. Ai’ve a funny feeling . . . Reahlly . . . deah Miss Pomeroy!”

  I was thrown halfway across the cockpit by the boat’s next jolt and didn’t hear the rest. Oh Christ, I said to myself. I leaned toward her again. “All right, we’ll go on, then, if that’s what you want.” Then I turned to glare at Nelson, who, wet through on the poop, was squinting at me through his one eye, and now and again swallowing the salt off his tongue. I knew he couldn’t hear what I said, but I also knew that he was agreeing with what I was thinking. Bloody women, they can’t stand the sight of each other when everything’s going well, but when one of them is in trouble with a bloke the others don’t fancy, watch out! Nelson nodded as I looked at him. Nelson knew the score, all right.

  It took us three hours to get through that strait. Then we had another hour’s bash west-northwest, another hour east-southeast, then another WSW, another ESE, and we finally came into the lee of the north coast of Formentera island about an hour before dusk. As I hadn’t more than a half-gallon of fuel left (complicated, being poor) I had to work my way into Formentera’s tiny port under sail. There was little wind and a lot of sea in the protection of the island, but eventually, after fiddling and fuming for another hour and a half, chastised and silent, Cresswell finally crept in between the low moles. Sissie tied the boat up while I drank the tea she had made as soon as the “juicy bits” were over.

  By the time we were settled down and shipshape, Sissie had all the gear which had been thrown about below back in place. The only thing onboard which showed any sign of wear and tear was yours truly, but after Sissie had shoved a plate of corned beef and chips, peas and radish in front of me, it didn’t take long for the brass lamps to be glowing again down below in Cresswell.

  Sissie wanted to get her shore-boots on and head for San Francisco, the hamlet where Miss Pomeroy lived, right away. I stopped her. “There’s no lights. There’s no moon. You’ll fall into one of those bloody great holes in the road. Anyway, I can’t go with you. When the wind backs around it’ll be blowing its head off from the north all night. It’ll send in quite a sea. If the anchor drags inside this harbor the boat will be smashed against the wall, just like poor old Fanny Adams was . . . I just have to be here and watch her. Anything else, with this weather, would be downright stupidity.” I wasn’t kidding Sissie. This was the case.

  Finally, the sense of my argument settled into Sissie’s head, and she settled down in her cubbyhole forward. Soon the chinkling notes of her Booth’s London Dry Gin bottle and glass tinkled through the forward bulkhead of the main cabin. A little while after, the hushed rustle of her Bible leaves told me that the English lioness was at peace in her lair.

  I turned again to my Oxford Book of English Verse, in the glimmering light of my oil lamp, and waited for the wind outside to back around to the north, and to do its worst as it started to send worried, frenetic little seas into the narrow mouth of Formentera harbor.

  Sure enough, by two a.m. a heavy swell was beating against the seaward sides of the tiny moles, sending wide streams of angry seawater right over the tops of the walls. Through the entrance, like eager fans crushing their way into some darkened concert hall, alive with energy, over-busy with a dozen competing rhythms, crowded with confusion, sea-swell after sea-swell, one after the other, pushed, shoved, surged, and broke through the entrance, against the excited, angry resistance of everything else in the small harbor, including Cresswell.

  By that time I had run my heavy storm anchor out, in the madly bobbing rubber dinghy, almost clear across the harbor. Then I had delved for my heaviest storm dragline—an inch-diameter rope almost 600 feet long. Sissie and I hauled that, too, right around the harbor and secured it to a bollard on the seawall. Cresswell now had two anchors and a heavy storm-line out to windward, to hold her off the wall downwind.

  As the wind gathered strength through the night, often driving slashing rain before it, Sissie and I watched the storm-line and anchor cables take the tremendous strain, and we tautened them up from time to time, until they were finally as tight as violin strings. Still the ever-increasing jerking of the boat threatened to drag the anchors or snap the line.

  “Oh, deah,” yelled Sissie, her oilskins streaming rain and spray, about four a.m. “Ai do wish that dretted wind would ease a teeny while, so you could get some sleep, dahling. Oh deah, you must be ebsolutely fagged out. Oh, you poor thing . . . Just a teeny tick—Sissie’ll make you some hot cocoa.”

  As I waited for the cocoa I crouched against the driving rain in Cresswell’s cockpit. I pumped out the bilge betimes (she was not self-draining) and hoped that the storm-line would not give to the incessant jerking of the
hull, time after time after time—four or five feet up and down, up and down, in the middle of the harbor. I tried to look around me: Nothing but black night, even to leeward. Nothing but a pale, ghostly beam of light every ten seconds, skittering through the myriad drops of spray and rain, from the tiny lighthouse at the harbor entrance; and the ghostly dim glimmer of the cabin oil-lamp down below in Cresswell. With the boat bouncing, straining, jerking, and heaving, and the wind roaring, rushing, and screeching all around the little port, it was like being in some nightmarish maelstrom—until Sissie, her oilskin cap streaming water, handed me a steaming mug of cocoa, covered with a saucer. I felt as if she had handed me a reprieve on Death Row.

  All night it went on, until just before dawn. Then the wind, exhausted, slumped and shuffled off to its usual quarter in the east. Another half an hour later, about six a.m., I could finally go below and sleep—but not until I had hauled back onboard again the storm-line and the heavy anchor, so that the Ibiza ferry would not foul them when she arrived.

  Even in haven, a mariner’s lot is not always easy.

  It was noon before Sissie woke me. “Yoo-hoo, Skip-pah, dahling—lunch time! Ai’ve made us some of your very own favorite . . . Look!”

  She passed a pot of steaming burgoo under my nose—porridge and bacon and bits of liver, kidney, heart, chitlins—all well-laced with rum. I knew it must be some kind of reward—or enticement—for me. Sissie couldn’t abide burgoo. For her to sit with me and eat a whole bowl of the stuff, and pretend it was delicious, there simply had to be something in the wind.

  After I finished my lunch I went topsides. The breeze was almost down to light airs by now, and the sky was clear. It had been a typical Mediterranean bitch-night, the storm gone just as quickly as it had arrived. No wonder it’s so bitchy, said I to myself. What else can be expected with a sea where the blokes that live around it drink wine all day and wear bloody scent? Then, as I frowned, thinking about the effects of regional weather on human temperament, I almost started out of my tee-shirt.

  The whole of Cresswell’s topsides—the cockpit, the poop, the side-decks, the coachroof, the foredeck—all had been thoroughly washed with fresh water! The varnish of the masts was polished and shining. Not a grain of salt was to be seen anywhere onboard. Not a sign of salt on the green and red navigation lights hanging on the shrouds. Not one speck of white on the compass glass; and the brass binnacle shone as if it were brand-new instead of sixty years old. The brass plates atop the mooring posts; the bronze metal rail trim around the foredeck and poop whale-backs; the brass ship-shields that decorated the companion-way doors—all sparkled, clean and highly polished. Topsides, Cresswell looked like she was headed for a boat-show. Hmm, I said to myself—something is in the wind.

  I went below again, silently. Trying not to make it obvious to Sissie, I stared around. The brass oil-lamps, the brass clock, the brass ladder trimmings—every bit of brass and bronze down below had been polished. The pictures on the forward bulkhead had been cleaned and the glass polished. The galley gleamed. The biscuit tin lid I used as a navigation table—even that was polished. The cabin sole was freshly scrubbed, and so was the table. The navigation and other books had all been taken down, dusted, and replaced on the cleaned shelves. Something was very definitely in the wind.

  I studied Sissie. She had on a pair of jeans now. Some tailor must have got a migraine figuring out that shape, I thought. Above them she wore a frilly blouse, with the sleeves unbuttoned and rolled back to the elbows. Her ginger hair looked as if a lion-tamer had finally discovered how to subdue it. As I sat down and inspected her, unnoticed, I thought, except by Nelson, who curiously watched this little game, she kept her eyes downcast on her bowl of burgoo, which she was doggedly trying to finish.

  “Good sleep, lass?” I asked, perkily.

  “Spiffing, dahling. Slept like a jolly old top! And you?”

  “Like a bottom,” said I. “Like an elephant’s bottom.”

  “Good.” Laconic this morning, our Sissie.

  “Bloody weather last night,” I said, stupidly.

  “Ghastly.”

  “We took quite a hammering.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I was worried in case that storm-line parted.”

  “Yes, lucky, weren’t we?” Sissie looked at me, the corners of her eyes smiling—but only the corners.

  “Nice bit o’ burgoo, that was.”

  “Ai’m so glad you liked it.” Head down again.

  “Just right, that was.” I peered over at Nelson. “Wasn’t it, boy?” Nelson wagged his tail, but kept his eye on Sissie. “Really went down well, that did,” I said, trailing off.

  “I thought you’d like it, dahling.” She looked up. There was a big dollopy tear in each eye. She stood up, picked up the lunch bowls, dumped them in the washing bucket, and headed up the ladder. I heard her feet clumping forward, the forward hatch open, and Sissie climbing down into her little caboose in the forepeak. Then there came the sound of subdued sobbing.

  Nelson and I looked at each other for a long minute. “Wonder what’s up with the second mate today,” I murmured to him. He wagged his tail. His tongue drooped a little further.

  Oh hell, I said to myself. Then, aloud, so she could hear me through the bulkhead, “What’s the matter, Sissie? Did I do something?”

  There was silence.

  “You might as well tell me, for Chrissake. If you don’t, how the heck do you expect it to be put right?”

  The sounds of sniffing came from forward.

  “Come on, girl, cut out the crap. No good having wrongs hidden in a sailing boat. Hang out your washing, as they say!”

  More sniffing.

  “All right, then, if you won’t tell me, I’ll take Nelson ashore for a walk!”

  “(Sniffle) . . . Oh, dahling . . . (sob) . . . You did so disappoint me, but I know I’m . . . just silly old me . . . (sob) . . . but I did think you would sort of spring up and go with me to see if deah Miss Pomeroy is quaite all right . . . (sob) . . . Ai’m so terrific’ly worried about her . . . (sob) . . . Ai couldn’t sleep one teeny wink . . . Ai’ve been in an ebsolute fret all morning . . . (sob) . . .”

  For Chrissake, I said to myself. “But I am going with you, as soon as my burgoo’s settled down. For God’s sake, she’s managed without you for a pair of weeks—surely a couple of hours won’t make any difference?”

  “Oh, dahling, I simply knew you would! I knew you were only teasing silly old me . . .” Her voice brightened up like a light switched on.

  “Of course. I’ll be ready for the off as soon as I’ve closed the skylights.”

  There was the sound of sudden movement from forward, then the tinkle of London Dry Gin for a second or two, then a scuffle as Sissie shot up through the forward hatch.

  “I simply knew you wouldn’t let poor dahling Miss Pomeroy down,” she said as she waited on deck.

  I had to look twice when I turned to her. In one hand she held her umbrella, furled, and in the other her hockey stick. Britannia was armed for the fray.

  Under the warm Mediterranean winter-blue sky all was still around us, but as Sissie, her blue jeans making her look even more broad in the beam around her stern, jumped for the jetty and Cresswell’s own stern shook, it was as if the Monarch of the Seas had just set forth to put the world to rights, and the Lesser Breeds without the Law were trembling the world around.

  With trepidation I took up Britannia’s rear-guard. Nelson, now on sentry duty, watched us as we fell into line-ahead and steamed off to do battle for our countrywoman, Miss Pomeroy.

  Chorus: Way, hey, and up she rises! Patent blocks of different sizes!

  Way, hey, and up she rises, earlye in the morning!

  What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

  What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

  What shall we do with a drunken sailor
earlye in the morning?

  Verses:

  Put him in the long boat ’til he’s sober (Repeat three times)

  Keep him there and make him bail her!

  Trice him up with a running bowline!

  Lash him to the taffrail as she’s yard-arm under!

  Put him in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on him!

  Give him a dose of the salt and water!

  Take him and shake him, and try and wake him!

  Give him a taste of the bosun’s rope-end!

  Shove him off to sea with Reuben Ranzo!

  Stick on his bollocks a mustard plaster!

  Shove him in a barrel with a press-gang bastard!

  Soak him in oil ’til he sprouts a flipper!

  Keep him in the galley ’til his bollocks are toasted!

  Scrape the hair off his tits with a hoop iron razor!

  —“Drunken Sailor”

  This was a “runaway” chantey. It was chanted in very quick time when lines had to be hauled fast. It was the only type of worksong allowed in the Royal Navy. It dates from the early nineteenth century. Sailors always pronounced any ‘y’ at the end of a word as ‘eye’. “Way, hey” is about as close that this savage-sounding yell can be described. Other questions posed by the chanteyman included the following: What shall we do with a thieving bastard? What shall we do with a Yankee skipper? And, appropriately for the following story, what shall we do with a drunken painter?

  13. What Shall We Do?

  I didn’t try to catch up with Sissie until we had passed through the port-hamlet, because I didn’t want the fishermen grinning at me too much. I let Cresswell’s second mate forge ahead, with her umbrella and hockey stick, frilly blouse, and brogue boots. It wasn’t until we were around the bend in the road, and over the hill, that I hollered to her. By now she was steaming along ahead of me at about eight knots.