Seagulls in My Soup

by Tristan Jones

  Somehow, with the aid of all the sea gods that ever helped a mariner ashore, I did it. I even managed to pay Alonzo, and then to stagger into the back of his little donkey-trap, and there collapse.

  “I sent the señoras on ahead,” said Alonzo. “We can pick them up on the road, and all get back to the boat together, Señor Capitán.”

  I remember nothing else until I woke up in Cresswell, on my berth. My head felt as if it had been stamped on by an enraged ox. Groaning, I lifted myself up and stared around. Through the companionway I could see that both Nelson and Sissie were standing guard on the stern. She was still wielding her hockey stick. The thought struck me, even as I stared at the prone body of La Pomeroy on the spare berth opposite, that I had never seen Sissie and Nelson ever do anything together before. I groaned again.

  “Just a teeny tick, dahling, Ai’ll make you some coffee,” Sissie sang out.

  That half-sobered me right away. “What?” I moaned.

  “Coffee! Your head must be bally-well bursting!”

  “Coffee? Don’t give me any of that crap—what do you think I am, a bloody Frenchman? For Chrissake, make some tea, and none o’ that damned Burma blend, either! I’ve got to sober up before that bloody great Skywegian oaf does, and get the boat the hell out of here. What’s the time?”

  “Nine o’clock, dahling. Listen, the lawst ferry’s just leaving!”

  I nodded toward the slumbering Pomeroy. “Pity she’s not on it.”

  Sissie rattled a teaspoon in protest. She looked at me.

  “Oh, but where would poor, dear Miss Pomeroy go? Thet dreadful foreign brute has jolly well spent all her allowance!”

  “Great.” I reached for the tea mug. “Just what I need—a non-paying passenger.”

  Miss Pomeroy groaned and rolled over a little. Her face was a mess, like a slab of raw beef, only the colors of a dead octopus.

  I relented a little. I stretched myself up, trying to raise my raging head and my aching stomach at the same time. It was dark outside. “Oh, well, we can at least get her over to Ibiza. Maybe something’ll turn up. One thing’s for sure . . .” I paused for a moment as fifty rusty iron rasps scraped across my brain.

  “What’s thet, dahling? Oh, poor deah—shell Ai put a poultice on your forehead?”

  “No, make another cuppa tea, and for Chrissake make it strong.”

  “What were you going to say, deah?”

  “Wha . . .”

  “Before you asked for the tea? You said one thing was for sure.”

  I groaned as I sat down again. “Oh, yeah. One thing’s for sure—if she stays here she’ll be dead inside a month, with that crazy bastard back there.” Another thought occurred to me. “What time did you leave the Fonda, Sissie?”

  “About four.”

  “I must have left around five, then. And it’s nine o’clock now. Four hours since that sod keeled over . . . Christ!” I jerked myself onto my feet. “Come on, he’ll be charging down here any minute! Let’s get the boat out . . . We’ve no fuel . . . We’ll have to work her out under sail . . . And if there’s a northerly . . .”

  Sissie chimed in. “The wind’s in the east, deah, and rawthah boisterous.” With Sissie that meant anything from a fresh breeze to a hurricane.

  “Well, at least we can get out of port, then, before that bloomin’ human tractor comes roaring down here.”

  Even as I said this there was a loud moan from Miss Pomeroy. Sissie laid a hand on her forehead—the bit that wasn’t bruised. “Oh, deah Miss Pomeroy, nevah you fret—you’re safe now. We’re bally-well taking you to Ibiza!”

  La Pomeroy gurgled through her split lips. But Sissie merely patted the blanket she had thrown over the wounded lady. “Now, now, don’t you try to say one teeny word. You’re in safe, British hands now.”

  “I wish they were safer,” I commented, thinking of the Great Dane. “I wish they were in bloody China!”

  In aches and pains and agony I made my way topsides to untie the mainsail and the jib. I’d just got the working jib hanked onto the forestay when there was an huge commotion under the electric lamp at the end of the jetty. I stared over. “God Almighty, he’s here already! Quick Sissie!”

  No reply.

  “SISSIE!”

  Sissie stuck her head up over the top of the companionway ladder. “Yoo hoo?”

  “Get your ass up here as fast as Christ will let you, girl—that bloody Skywegian is heading straight down the jetty, and . . . Wait a minute, that’s funny—he’s got the local coppers with him.”

  There were three Guardia Civil on the island. Two of them, both big men, were right now trying to hold onto the giant Dane. Sven was shrugging them off as he stumbled along, like a bear tossing terriers.

  “Slip the mooring lines, fast!” I shouted, but Sissie was already at them. She threw the untied lines onboard and heaved Cresswell away from the jetty before she leaped onboard. I started to haul up the main halyard, but was stopped by a high, piping voice: “Señor! Señor! Espera! Wait!”

  It was a big police sergeant waving at me. His mate was still arguing with Sven at the root of the mole, clutching now and again at the Dane’s poncho, trying to hold him back.

  I let go of the halyard. The boat was now about eight feet from the jetty. Too far for anyone to jump onboard, I reckoned quickly. “What’s the matter, señor?” I hollered against the wind, as innocently as I could.

  “This gentleman says you have his wife onboard, but we know him. Alonzo has told us how he treats her. We know, too, that it’s not his wife. He has been . . . living in sin!” He removed his black leather hat and wiped his brow.

  “She’s very badly beaten-up,” I shouted, my hands cupped around my lips. “I’m going to get her to a doctor in Ibiza! Anyway, it’s true that she wasn’t his wife. She was his . . . paramour!”

  “That’s all very well for a woman, living in sin,” shouted the sergeant. “I mean they’re easily led, aren’t they? But for a man—an artist!”

  While the sergeant was giving me his lecture on comparative morality, Sven was howling in the night gale at the top of his voice, waving his arms around violently, and steadily approaching the boat as the sergeant’s colleague tried to hold onto his giant frame.

  First he was shouting and bawling in Danish, then he broke into English as he neared the spot under the lamp on the jetty opposite to where the boat was floating free. “That’s my woman you got there, you English bastard! You stop or I fuckin’ kill you! I sink your boat! I murder that whore of an English lady!”

  “Miss Pomeroy is going to see a doctor!” I hollered back, both at Sven and the policemen.

  “I give her a doctor! She need a fuckin’ doctor when I finish, OK!”

  The huge painter ranted and raved. He tried to jump into the harbor to reach us. Both policemen were upon him. The sergeant stepped back and drew his pistol from its holster. He pointed it at Sven. Sissie and I, horrified, gazed at the scene. We saw Sven stop. We watched as he glared at the sergeant. He started to stagger toward the policeman. The sergeant shouted something. Sven stopped again. The sergeant shouted again.

  A group of fishermen who had been crowded on the jetty, watching, all suddenly rushed up behind Sven and jumped on him. With the police private and the fishermen all hanging onto him, Sven went under, but it took another five or six minutes before, still struggling, they had him down on the jetty with handcuffs on his wrists and the police private’s Sam Browne belt strapped tight around his ankles. All the while Sven hollered and screamed, until, when he was securely lashed up, a fisherman dumped a fishing net over him. Still he bellowed, moaned, groaned, and tried to lash out with his hands and feet.

  The sergeant somehow recovered his leather hat, which had fallen into the harbor water, and laid it down on the stone jetty to drain. As he wiped his brow again in the moonlight he breathed so hard th
at I could hear it twelve or so yards away. “Despicable! Living in sin!” he shouted again to me. “But this isn’t the problem, señor!”

  “Que hay, entonces? What is it, then?”

  “Señora Puig is . . . in a certain condition! There are complications! Her child is not due for another month! The island doctor is away at a conference in Palma! The ferry is gone! The telephone lines came down in the storm yesterday! We cannot raise anyone on the radio transmitter! We can’t hear them, in Ibiza, and we don’t know if they can hear us!”

  “So, what do you want? Shall I tell them when I get to Ibiza?”

  “No, señor, we have Señora Puig down here now! She’s in the hotel! She has . . . much pain! Her husband, Antonio Puig, is here with her now! For the love of God and the blessed Virgin, señor, can you take her with you to Ibiza?”

  This was a turn for the books. I stared at the sergeant as he stood hatless in the moonlight. I looked at all the other pleading faces in the pale light around him. The fishermen’s boats were far too small to risk a passage on a night like this, through the strait with an easterly gale.

  “It’ll be a rough passage,” I sang out. The wind was steadily blowing the boat farther away from the group on the jetty. I think the sergeant’s face brightened. “But I’ll tell you what, sergeant!”

  “Que?”

  “If you keep that animal locked up for ten days, and make sure he doesn’t get on the Ibiza ferry, or find any other way to Ibiza, then I’ll do it!”

  “Seguro! No hay problema! Right, you’re on!” he yelled back.

  I heaved a line over. The sergeant caught it.

  I turned to Sissie, who was staring at me in the dim light. “Any problems?” I asked her.

  “No. But I’m still a little bit cross with you, dahling.”

  “For what? What the hell have I done now, lass?” I started hauling the boat back to the jetty.

  “Exchanging toasts with that beastly chep!”

  I laughed quietly. “D’ye know what I told him, in Welsh?”

  She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

  “Bad cess to you! And I told him at least a dozen times, and the bugger’s built like the Tower Bridge!”

  Then began a nightmare night passage that I shall never forget as long as my blood can turn cold, nor yet as long as my heart can warm itself on memories.

  Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,

  Dreaming o’er joys of night;

  Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep

  Little sorrows sit and weep.

  Sweet babe, in thy face

  Soft desires I can trace,

  Secret joys and secret smiles,

  Little pretty infant wiles.

  As thy softest limbs I feel,

  Smiles as of the morning steal

  O’er thy cheek and o’er thy breast

  Where thy little heart doth rest.

  O the cunning wiles that creep

  In thy little heart asleep!

  When thy little heart doth wake,

  Then the dreadful night shall break.

  “Cradle Song”

  —William Blake

  14. Cradle Song

  By the time Sissie and I had hauled Cresswell back alongside the jetty, six fishermen, one of whom was the sick woman’s husband, Antonio Puig, had arrived with the señora lying on a makeshift stretcher made from an old door. The woman appeared to be in a very bad way. With her eyes closed and an expression of intense agony on her face, she thrashed her head around and moaned grievously. At times her moans rose to a loud screech of pain. The rain had begun to hiss down again, and the wind had risen to a howl.

  The fishermen were accompanied by a local priest, a young man about thirty, who wore a long black cloak over his cassock. “God will bless you,” were his first words to me.

  “Let’s hope not too soon,” said I. “Anyway, can you find out if there’s any diesel oil around?” I knew that the small, open fishing boats used kerosene, but I wasn’t sure if there might not be diesel fuel stored for the use of a truck or the electrical generating plant. Hurriedly, the priest asked the oilskin-clad fishermen in the local version of Catalan. There were downcast faces and vigorous waggings of regret.

  By now we were all wet through. Señora Puig, with Sissie effusing sympathy all over her, was being helped down the companionway ladder. The priest turned to me. “Unfortunately, Spain is not rich in petroleum, you see, Señor Capitán—but we make kerosene from the coal of the Asturias.” He started to go onboard.

  “Donde vas? Where are you going?” I asked him, squinting against the rain.

  “Onboard, to have a word with Señora Puig.”

  “If you set one foot onboard my boat, I don’t sail. We’ve already had one of your gang onboard a few days ago.”

  “Superstitions. Pagan super . . .”

  I didn’t let him finish. “Look,” I told him, “there’s two very sick women onboard Cresswell. It’s going to be very difficult getting east through the strait between here and Ibiza, with this wind howling dead against us. So far as I know the boat’s in good order. I’m not particularly superstitious—but I’m taking no chances. So kindly stay ashore and do us all a favor, señor priest?”

  I felt a little sorry for the young man. He seemed a decent type—trying to be helpful in this situation, but not what I needed now. Sadly he made a gesture of resignation and acceptance, and turned away toward the dry hotel at the end of the jetty. As he went he called back to me through the rain, “Vaya con Dios, y que Dios te bendiga! Go with God, and may He bless you!”

  I watched him disappear into the rain, then turned to Antonio, the father-to-be, and patted his shoulder. “He meant you,” I told him. “Of course you’re coming with us. How’s your sailing? Haven’t forgotten it, have you, with those engines you use nowadays?”

  Antonio grinned at me. We’d had quite a few jars together in the hotel bar. Of all the Formentera fishermen I had met, I liked Antonio the best. He was about twenty-eight, bigger than the average local man, clean-shaven, but with the very same black hair and eyes. He was clearly worried, naturally. It was to be his wife’s second delivery. The first had been a little girl who had miscarried, he told me. “My sailing’s good—but God grant a boy this time. It’s not much fun . . . The other fishermen have been . . .”

  He left the rest unsaid, but I guessed that it would have been “ . . . making jokes about me. You’re not a man until you have a son.” It was a tenet of their lives.

  I nodded at the bow. Antonio knew what to do. As the rain slashed down in the black night, he hopped to the jetty, cast off the stern-line, untied the bow-line, and started hauling the boat to the seaward end of the little mole. His black oilskin overcoat gleamed in the pale light of the harbor beacon as it flashed every five seconds. What with the rain pelting down, the wind howling in the shrouds, the squealing of the mainsail parrel rings as I strained at the main halyard, and the agonized screams from Señora Puig below, it was like a scene from Purgatory.

  At the last second, Antonio handed the bow line to one of his fisher-friends and leaped onboard, even as Cresswell, with the jib up and drawing, pregnant with the gale, shot out of the harbor mouth. He grabbed the main halyard from me and I sprang down and took the wheel. As I flashed by the companionway I glanced into the cabin. The scene was chaotic. In the dim, reddish-yellow glow of the oil lamp Sissie was bending over, holding tightly the hand of the flailing, screaming señora. On the other berth the prone Miss Pomeroy, her face now cleaned of blood but still bruised and bashed, was on her side, trying to open her cruelly swollen eyes; trying, it seemed to me as I took all this in through a second or two, to speak to Sissie.

  I grabbed the wheel and heaved the boat around the leeward mole-end. We were lucky. The priest might have been right. We missed the wall by no more than an inch or two. By now Anto
nio was back hauling in the mainsheet as we both stared through the lashing rain, stupefied, and prayed our way past the great stones under the harbor beacon. As Cresswell shot clear of our first hazard, Antonio visibly heaved with relief. He secured the mainsheet and headed for the cabin. I stopped him. I didn’t say anything for a moment; there were far too many things running through my head. On top of all the calculations of wind and currents, hazards and dangers, I was almost frantic with worry that Señora Puig might die. The noise from below did nothing to allay my fears for her. I grabbed Antonio’s shoulder as my other hand strained at the wheel. Now we were getting the full blasts of the wind, although the sea, in the shelter of the northern point of Formentera, was still fairly flat. Cresswell laid over in the sudden, mighty blasts and put her bow-cheek to the sea.

  The Mediterranean wind frequently doesn’t blow with a regular force, as it mostly does in other climes. It pulses. It’s bitchy. One minute it’s down to fifteen knots, the next minute comes a bluster, anything up to thirty or forty knots or more. It needs a lot of attention. You have to have eyes and ears in your elbows. You have to concentrate all the time. It’s not easy sailing in the Mediterranean at night with a full gale blowing all the way from Vesuvius. With a badly beaten-up woman below, and another screaming her head off, my own head was too full of concerns for me to say anything much to Antonio for a minute or two. He started to pull away, but I kept a hold on him. “Nice weather for ducks, eh?” I said.

  Antonio looked at me, perplexed. I pulled myself together, remembering that his English was nil. I hoped he could understand my Castilian. “There’s a bottle of gin up in the forepeak. I don’t have any drugs onboard . . . no anesthetic . . . Go up there, get that bottle to your wife, and let her . . .”

  Antonio nodded violently as I shouted. Already he was off to the forepeak. Soon he was back, bearing Sissie’s precious sanity-saver. He grinned and offered me the bottle.

  “No—only fools and passengers drink at sea!” I bawled. “Give it to your wife!”

  All the while the sea’s violence was increasing. Cresswell zoomed ahead in the gale. By now she was well heeled over, at hull speed, doing around six and a half knots. Steadily her movement increased. She was rearing and descending, bucking and bashing, as she reached the open water west of the strait.