Seagulls in My Soup

by Tristan Jones

  “Sissie!” No answer was the loud reply. Bloody hell, she deaf or something? Another bellow. “SISSIE!”

  This time she turned her head and decelerated to a slow walk. Even so, it was a good few minutes before I caught up with her.

  Sailors, in general, are not eager walkers. I’m not talking about the yogurt-and-nuts-for-breakfast brigade (there are exceptions in any group of people), but I mean the average deckie. Sure, he can manage to plod around to a local bar near the waterfront, and sometimes even to roll back again, but when it comes to cross-country marathons, and especially when he is trying to keep up with an English games-mistress on her way to tackle a seven-and-a-half-foot giant, he is not exactly an odds-on favorite for the four-minute mile.

  “Oh, deah Tristan!” she yelled when at last I was fifteen yards astern of her, “I feel so jolly enthused! Bally silly, ectually . . . of course a few minutes won’t make much difference . . . But Ai’m so awf’ly eagah to know that dear, dahling Miss Pomeroy is awl right . . . Oh my goodness, she’s so dreadfully sweet and innocent, and thet . . . thet cad! Thet simply obnoxious boundah!”

  As she exploded the last word a black cloud over on the far eastern horizon suddenly flickered lightning down to the black sea below. It seemed to me as if a few tortured souls in the Inferno had all moved up one space to make way for big Sven from Copenhagen.

  At last I was breathlessly alongside the Dragon of Devon, limping a little from the unaccustomed marching. Sissie’s face, which a moment before had been glowering as she had consigned the drunken painter to the nethermost pit of an English hell, suddenly melted into pity. “Oh, you poor dahling! Ai’m trotting off much too fawst, aren’t Ai? Silly old me . . .”

  “It’s all right. You go on ahead, if you like. I’ll catch up with you. You can wait for me in the little shop at San Francisco. Don’t go into Fonda Alonzo without me.”

  “Whyevah not, dahling?”

  We were passing goats and kids in a field now, and although Sissie cooed and glanced at them now and again (“Oh, my deah—look at thet sweet, gorgeous, cozy, cuddly little angel. Oh, I could just simply hug it!”) there was no climbing and slithering over the stone walls as there had been on our previous pilgrimage to the Fonda Alonzo.

  “Because if the dangerous Dane is pissed out of his skull and you start anything with dear little Miss Pomeroy, he’s going to grab you by the ears, swing you ’round, and fling you five miles back to Cresswell all the way from San Francisco. That’s why.”

  Sissie shook her hockey stick. She harrumphed. “Ai should just bally-well like to see him try!”

  There was silence between us for another half-mile, as Sissie forged ahead and I trotted along just astern of her. Then I said, “What are you going to do, then, Sissie?”

  “Ai’m going to dashed-well make sure that deah Miss Pomeroy is awl right.”

  “And if she’s not? What then?”

  “Ai shell give her my address!”

  My heart almost stopped. “What, on the boat?”

  “No, of course not, dahling! In England, through deah Willie!”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, if thet dreadful foreign beast bullies her, Ai mean simply herds her to bally distraction, she must write. Ai shell tell her to pack her jolly old kitbag and simply march out and fly to Willie!”

  “Mmm . . . that’ll be nice.” In my mind’s eye I could see the bishop and the lady children’s author having tea in some leafy bower, a phantasmic black-dressed Miss Benedict hovering in the background with a croquet mallet:

  “OhI’msorelievedtobebackinEngland (giggle).”

  “England is the only country, my dear Miss Pomeroy, where we understand liberty? And where, consequently, no one cares about justice?”

  “OhBishopSaintJohn,soclever (giggle)!”

  As I imagined this meeting of minds in some faraway English cathedral town, Sissie went on. “It’s the only thing Ai . . . we can do, my deah skippah. Thet poor little sweet soul is out heah in this dreadful, peasanty place, living in awf’ly abject misery in thet scungy hovel with thet . . . thet . . .” Sissie’s expression was intense as she sought some way to describe what she thought of Sven. Suddenly she turned to me. “ . . . thet white-slavah!”

  As she yelled this, small birds started from their nests in stone walls half a mile away; billy-goats meh-heh-heh’d; and an ancient windmill’s sails shook as if they had been awakened. I had a vision of sixty-year-old Miss Pomeroy as the star of the Checkalov whorehouse in Buenos Aires, smothered in paste jewels, black fishnet stockings and all.

  “Nawsty feller,” Sissie said later, a little quieter now. Billy-goats and donkeys panicked and raced away from the sides of the road. “Awful chep!”

  “I don’t think you like him, Sissie,” I observed.

  “Ai wish we had deah Toby with us. He’d know what to jolly-well do! Chased those awful Germans all ovah the bally desert. Oh, deah Toby. I do hope thet dreadful chorus gal hasn’t . . .” As the tiny hamlet of San Francisco Javier hove into sight, she left the rest unsaid.

  “I wish we had the whole bloody parachute regiment with us,” I commented as we traipsed along the deserted street towards the Fonda Alonzo, which awaited us like a whitewashed nemesis. “And the Royal Marines, fully booted and spurred.”

  Alonzo was sitting behind his otherwise empty bar when Sissie and I walked in. His jowls were still in his hands. He was yet staring into space. He started as I greeted him. He dashed around the corner and hoisted Sissie’s hand, hockey stick and all, to his lips. By now Sissie was getting used to this, or perhaps it was because the hand-kisser wasn’t Lieutenant Francisco; anyway, she accepted the greeting regally and smiled down at the top of Alonzo’s bent head, not batting an eyelid.

  “Señora!” Alonzo gazed up at her Saxon-blue eyes in adoration as he slobbered. “Encantado! Mi casa es su casa . . .” Enchanted! My house is yours.

  I ordered wine. “Make it a good one, Alonzo—not that stuff we had last time. I was shitting blue lights for three days after that last little lot,” I said in Castilian. A colorful language, Spanish.

  Alonzo dashed around the bar again. Hurriedly he gazed over the bottles. “Lo siento . . . I’m sorry, Señor Capitán, nothing here is good enough for your mercy and the señora, but down in the cellar . . . Please take a table.” He rushed out from the bar and disappeared through the back door.

  Sissie and I sat down at a corner table in the dark bar and gazed at a greasy calendar for 1957. It showed two seamen in French navy uniforms, with red pompoms on their caps, both looking like they came off a 1920 toothpaste advertisement. They were grinning at a bonny lass with her hair in a bun and a red rose in her teeth, all frills and flounces.

  Sissie saw me inspecting the calendar. “She’s a hostess at a Sailor’s Home,” she said.

  “She’s off to dance a bloomin’ fandango, only her shoes are too tight, and anyway, she knows them froggies are skint . . .”

  Even as I spoke, the sunlight streaming through the front door of the Fonda Alonzo suddenly dimmed, as if God had pulled a switch. Our immense Danish white-slaver had arrived.

  The whole floor shook as Sven rolled his shoulders over toward us. Even while he was yards away from us his haunch-like hand was held out in front of him, and his great face—what I could see of it behind his mop of blond hair—was beaming. His little blue piggy eyes shone.

  “Hey, what you know! The English seamens!” The giant grabbed Sissie’s hand as she went rigid, and smacked it a kiss. With his other hand he reached over and ruffled my head. It was as if I was being buffeted by a swinging main-boom. For a moment my ears rang.

  Sven was still dressed exactly the same as he had been the last time we had seen him. He still had five huge toes on each foot and yet another layer of dirt on them. “You come back to Formentera, hey?” he boomed. He looked wildly around him. “Where�
�s that bloody Alonzo? ALONZO!” he yelled at the top of his voice. The old calendar on the wall shook with the vibrations.

  “He’s in the cellar,” I started to say.

  “Cellar? Fuckin’ cellar? I put him in his grave!”

  No sooner had the huge painter said this than Alonzo came scooting in, followed by his diminutive wife, who bore a bottle. Breathlessly humble, Alonzo grabbed the bottle from his wife and pulled the cork. “Very good, this one, señores. From Zaragossa.” He sprang behind the bar, panting, and grabbed three glasses.

  As he reached the table again, Sven seized the bottle and, just like the last time, slopped the wine—a fine, golden vintage—over the table and into the glasses. He mauled his glass and turned to Sissie. “To your health and beauty, my dear English lady!” he toasted.

  Sissie’s voice was small, piercing, and very steady. “I have not come here to be toasted, Mister Knutsen,” said she with a sniff.

  Sven jerked his huge head and shoulders back and stared at her. He tossed the glass to his lips and swallowed the lot. He slammed the glass down on the table and hunched toward her. “What do you mean?” he growled. “What do you mean, you don’t come here to be toasted? I’ll toast you, all right!”

  Sissie was sitting at attention now, her hockey stick on the seat beside her. “I have come here,” she said, “to jolly-well see Miss Pomeroy.”

  Slowly the giant turned his eyes toward me. They were crafty now. “And you? What you here for, Engelsman-who-don’t-go-fuckin’-nowhere?”

  “I’m with her,” I replied, nodding at Sissie, who now stared directly at the Dane. She looked like Queen Victoria holding an audience with Jack the Ripper.

  “You with her, eh?” the monster bawled at me. “You can’t go nowhere on your own?”

  “I like her company,” I replied quietly, as he slopped another glassful of wine straight down his throat.

  “I toast you!” Sven shouted at me. “I fuckin’ toast you. You toast me, right?”

  “Why don’t you toast me in Danish,” I said, “and I’ll toast you in my language. OK?”

  “Ja! OK!” He lifted his half-filled glass. “SKOAL!” he roared.

  I lifted my glass. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sissie glaring at me as though I had betrayed England. I looked the blond monster straight in his piggy eyes. I smiled at him and spoke very slowly. “Budreddi drwg ar chwi!” I toasted him in Welsh. I slugged off my whole glassful of the best Zaragossa wine.

  There was a silence for a while as Sven sloshed off two more glasses and emptied the bottle. Then he turned to Sissie. “What for you wanna see Miss bloody Pomeroy?” he slurred.

  “Because she’s my friend,” said Sissie.

  “Your friend? YOUR FRIEND!” The giant slammed a fist down in front of him. “That little bitch, she nobody’s friend!”

  I chimed in. “She’s not my friend, Sven. What do you say if Sissie goes up and sees Miss Pomeroy, and you and me have a few snorters?”

  “Snorters?”

  “Glasses of wine. Bloody women can’t drink. You know that.”

  “Ja!” The giant reached over and hit me on the shoulder, almost displacing my collarbone. I still had a deep-blue bruise there a week later. “Only good in bed, hey?”

  “Right . . . Alonzo!”

  Alonzo stopped studying Sissie’s only curve—the one on her nose—and sprang to attention.

  “Four bottles of house wine—and make it snappy!”

  “Si, Señor Capitán. Inmediatamente!”

  Sissie started to rise from her seat. I turned right around and winked at her. “Now, Sissie, you go up and see Miss Pomeroy, right? And of course you simply, awf’ly realize that I don’t want to see you bringing that dreadful, peasanty, pimply person down into Alonzo’s bar. This is men’s business!”

  Sissie looked at me, perplexed. I went on. “Now off you trot upstairs and see that dreadful harridan. Of course you know we don’t want to see that shocking wretch down here.”

  As I went on parodying Sissie’s speech I could see that she was guessing at my irony, although it was obvious that she was not quite sure.

  Still in a small voice she muttered, “Of course, Skip-pah. Ai shell only be a few teeny minutes.” She picked up her hockey stick and umbrella just as Alonzo set the four wine bottles on the table and Sven, completely ignoring Sissie, grabbed a bottle. He slurped the blackish-red, bitter vinegar into his and my glasses, spilling a pint on the table in the process.

  “Bloody women . . .” I said to the giant.

  He leered a smile at me. “Hey, Engelsman—you good guy, you know that?”

  “Oh, we do our best,” I said, sipping my wine.

  “But you drink like a fuckin’ fairy. Like a bloody woman.” He slopped more wine into our glasses. “Look, we know how to drink in Copenhagen, I tell you. Watch me.”

  He raised his glass. “SKOAL!” Down it went. It just disappeared. His adam’s apple seemed not to move at all. “Now, you do that!” He rested both his elbows on the table in front of him and glared at me.

  I lifted my glass. “Budreddi drwg ar chwi!” shouted I, and somehow knocked the bitter liquid down past the back of my throat. My stomach shuddered.

  Even as the painter raised his glass again, in marched Sissie, dragging behind her, like a wretched wraith, the sniveling Miss Pomeroy. For a moment, as the acidic wine attacked my stomach and my eyes, and against the sunlight shining through the door, I could not see either of them very well—but I had already sensed Sissie’s indignation as she had steamed in.

  Sven gurgled down his glass and again reached for a bottle.

  “Tristan!” Sissie’s voice was distrait.

  “Wazzup, love?”

  “Ai . . . Ai’m . . . Look!”

  “Wazzup?” I peered at Sissie. I could hear Miss Pomeroy sniffling.

  “Well, don’t just sit theah—look at poor Miss Pomeroy!”

  Sven took no notice as he poured out another wine for himself. I managed to drag myself to my feet. Miss Pomeroy was hiding her face. Her blue-rinsed hair was all astraggle. Sissie gently put a red, blistered finger under the little elderly woman’s chin and lifted her face. La Pomeroy looked as if she had been half-butchered. Both her eyes were closed blue bruises, streaked with runny mascara. On her forehead was another bruise, big and round like a purple goose egg. A great plaster was stuck over one side of her chin. Her lips were split and swollen.

  I sucked in my breath. Still Sven sat with his back to us. Sissie started to say “Thet great . . .” I laid a hand hard on her arm.

  “Walked into a door and fell down the steps, eh love?” I said to La Pomeroy.

  Her head fell onto my tee-shirt. She sobbed. I patted her shoulder. “That’s all right, Miss P. Accidents happen in the best-regulated families,” I said stupidly, trying to keep bloody screaming murder out of my voice. “I’ll tell you what—why don’t you go with Sissie down to the port. They’ve got some steaks in the fridge in the hotel down there . . .” I nudged Sissie’s arm with my elbow, hard.

  “She not go nowhere. She my woman!” came a growl from Sven, who still didn’t look around.

  “They can be back in a hour. I’ll ask Alonzo to run them down in his donkey-trap,” I told the Dane.

  “She not go nowhere. She stay here!”

  I sat down. “Oh, all right,” I said, “but let Sissie go upstairs with her for a while at least.”

  “OK, but if I don’t hear them up there . . .” He pointed to the bar ceiling with a massive finger, “then I fuckin’ kill her!”

  I looked at Sissie. She was trembling with rage and fear at the same time.

  “Me and Sven’s going to have a drink or two together. You take Miss P. upstairs again, eh? Try and make her comfortable or something, lass.”

  Sven had his head tossed back, eyes closed. I n
odded my head violently in the direction of the port as Sissie stared at me. She turned away from us, leading the half-blinded Miss Pomeroy. As she reached the door I shouted, “Sissie!”

  She turned abruptly. “What?”

  “I won’t be more than an hour . . . It’ll take that long.”

  With thin little Miss P. sobbing desperately against her shoulder, Sissie passed out under the stares of a hundred locals, gathered, sadly curious, at the door of the Fonda Alonzo. I somehow knew that Sissie was heading straight for Cresswell. I also knew that if footsteps were not heard overhead very shortly, the great bully across the table would be after them. I hoped against hope that the Dane had not learned any Spanish. I kept my voice as steady as I could.

  “Alonzo!”

  “Si, señor?”

  “Four more bottles and send your wife upstairs to walk around.”

  “Si, señor, inmediatamente—a sus ordenes!”

  Soon four more bottles were on the table. Then, for the next hour, the giant lady-killer and I matched each other at swigging the foul, tart vintage, glass after bloody glass, measure for flaming measure, and toast for bleeding toast.

  “SKOAL!”

  “Budreddi drwg ar chi!”

  Again and again and again.

  Every few minutes Sven stopped yelling and howling, craftily gazed up at the ceiling, and listened to the footsteps above. Then off again we went, hell-bent to get plastered.

  It took a total of six bottles before the giant finally slumped over. How I managed to keep up with him I’ll never know. It must have been the thought of Sissie’s disgusted tone with me after I had first toasted the Dane; or my imagining him catching up with them on the road; or the anger that was in me at the insults hurled my way by this bullying idiot; or the recollection of the terrible damage done to the tiny lady’s face.