Seagulls in My Soup

by Tristan Jones

  “I know, Miss Saint John,” said Amyas, as a tear slid down her rose-bedecked chest, “I felt the same, as it were. Of course I couldn’t let the poor chap just float around, as it were.”

  “So what did you do with him?” I asked Dreadnaught’s skipper.

  “Well, he was sinking again by now, of course. I’d been towing him around for over a week by the time we sailed into Cartagena. I had to lash a few of my plastic fenders around him to keep the poor devil afloat.”

  “Why didn’t you just let him sink? You could have said a prayer,” I said.

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I thought he ought to have a decent Christian burial. But they wouldn’t accept the body anywhere, and I towed it around for three weeks. It wasn’t easy . . .”

  Amyas dug again into his cod and lifted a great mound of dead-white fish flesh into his mouth. I gazed at the bleeding-heart picture behind Miss P. Sissie softly pushed her plate away from her. “Dahling,” she addressed me, “Ai simply cawn’t imagine why, but I just don’t have one teeny weeny bit of appetite tonight. Oh, deah Mistah Cupling, do, please, forgive me!” she begged.

  “Of course, dear lady,” said Amyas. “As I was saying, it wasn’t easy, because he had been a heavy man. Bits and pieces started coming off when the weather got a bit uppity—his intestines and everything. Finally I lost him in a gale off Valencia. I’d been taking him there, you see? Thought there might be a chance they’d accept him, as it were, in Valencia—not as touristy as it is farther south, is it? Dreadnaught got quite a bit of buffeting that night, and of course I couldn’t just sit there in the wind and rain watching a corpse floating around, could I? Anyway, by that time the line had been paid out almost three hundred feet. Almost impossible, as it were, to see the body in the high seas rising up and down, and in the rain and dark . . .”

  Sissie stood up. She winced apologetically down at me as I finished my steamed cod. Miss Pomeroy forced her eyes away from Amyas and gazed, startled, up at Sissie, who held her breath and patted her tummy. “Ai cawn’t imagine why. I’ve suddenly come over dreadfully dizzy! Oh, Mistah Cupling, forgive me! Ai think Ai’m going to have one of my dreadful turns!” Sissie’s voice was faint.

  La Pomeroy jumped up and put her scrawny arm around Sissie’s games-mistress shoulders. “OhyoupoordearIshalltakeyoubacktotheboatrightaway!”

  “Oh, dahling skippah,” Sissie sniffled, her head down, her face white, “do forgive silly old me. Ai shell go back onboard!”

  I said nothing as I stared at Sissie, surprised.

  “Dear Miss Saint John . . .” Amyas started to rise.

  “Oh, no, Mistah Cupling; no, deah skippah, please don’t bothah yourselves,” moaned Sissie as La Pomeroy half-pulled, half-led her away from the table and out of the now half-empty restaurant.

  “One of those female things, as it were, eh?” Amyas suggested, when the two Englishwomen had left us.

  “Might be the wine,” I said. “She usually drinks Booth’s gin.”

  Amyas poured himself another measure of wine and bent to attack a rubbery yellow flan pudding. “Funny creatures, as you say.”

  “Delicate,” said I, chewing away at my flan.

  “Think Miss Pomeroy’s taken a liking to me, old man?”

  “Oh, absolutely, Amyas. She’s completely forgotten that foreign bloke in Formentera.”

  “Always better to be among your own, as it were?”

  “Of course. Can’t mix oil and water.”

  Amyas’ ears picked up at that. For another hour and a half, over one more bottle of wine, he treated me to the story of how Dreadnaught’s fuel tanks were rusted right through and how he was going to replace them with copper tanks. “Only thing you can’t trust steel plate for, as it were . . .”

  The next day when Sissie woke me, she was short with me. I stared, bleary-eyed, at her for a minute or two. As Nelson slapped my leg under the table with his tail I glanced over at La Pomeroy’s berth. She was nowhere in sight. No Alice-blue dress, no mascara, no silver slippers—nothing. Only an abandoned blanket.

  “Hello, where’s Miss P?” I slurred.

  Sissie slammed my steaming tea mug in front of me on the tabletop and harrumphed. “Hmmm . . . you might jolly-well awsk,” she muttered.

  “She’s gone back home, then?”

  “No.”

  “Formentera?”

  “No.”

  “Where the heck is she, then, Sissie?”

  She rammed a teaspoon into her cup and viciously stirred away.

  “Sissie?” I sat up now.

  She glowered at me silently.

  “No! She’s not . . .”

  Sissie almost screamed at me. “She most certainly is!”

  “On Dreadnaught?” I took a sip of tea. “Already? When?”

  “Thet dreadful hussy! Surely . . . Oh, deah skippah, didn’t you notice lawst night, when you came onboard, thet Miss Pomeroy wasn’t heah? At her age, too . . . Why, she’s . . .”

  “Of course, not. Amyas and I were ashore until about two, knocked back a few in the George and Dragon. Didn’t notice a thing. Why, what did she do, for Chrissake?”

  Sissie huffed. “Miss Pomeroy brought me back onboard, saw me safely out of the way, in my cabin, and then, as I was just . . .” Sissie almost said “taking my nightcap,” but she remembered I was not supposed to know about it. “ . . . as I was reading the twenty-first psalm, I heard her simply scrabble her things into that dreadful handbag of hers and climb ovah onto that bally old Dreadnaught!”

  “So? What’s wrong with that? She brought you home OK, didn’t she? I think that was good of her, considering that Amyas had invited her along specially so he could get to know her.”

  “But throwing herself at him like that, deah skippah!

  Ai mean it’s not as if she were a terribly young gal, is it?”

  “All the more reason she should be eager,” I observed.

  “But what will all these . . . these foreigners in the othah boats think of us? Oh poor, dahling Tristan—of course you just don’t jolly-well see things the way we women see them, do you, you poor deah? More tea? Oh, you poor, poor men, and deah Mistah Cupling in the hends of thet dreadful woman!” Sissie wagged her head from side to side and clucked her tongue.

  “Amyas was trying to get her onboard,” I said calmly.

  “Well, of course . . . thet Salome had designs on him right from the very start. But to creep onboard his boat in the middle of the night, like a . . .” Sissie almost burst into tears, “ . . . a fallen woman! Ai simply won’t know where to bally-well look when Ai pass those awful foreigners . . . And thet dreadful harridan on thet Andorran motor yacht—what will she think of us in thet awful, devious head of hers?”

  I looked at Sissie. She was violently stirring porridge in a pan on the galley stove. “But what about you?” I asked her. “I mean you’ve been living alone with me onboard Cresswell. Don’t you think they imagine we’re . . . having . . .” I searched for a phrase Sissie would understand, “ . . . living in sin?”

  Sissie stared at me imperiously. “Of course not! How would they bally-well dare? They know perfectly well . . . I always tell them. Ai have my own private cabin heah!” She spoke as if the poky den in Cresswell’s bows was the Queen of Spain’s own stateroom.

  “Well then, why should they imagine that Miss P. is having her end away with Mister Cupling?”

  “Because they don’t have separate bally cabins, thet’s why!”

  “Well, Amyas can soon fix that. Get a sheet of steel plate, weld it across Dreadnaught’s cabin, cut a bloody door in it, no problem. He’s a handy enough bloke!”

  “Thet’s not the point!” Sissie slapped a plate of porridge in front of me. “The point is thet Miss Pomeroy slept onboard thet poor man’s crawft lawst night!”

  “But blimey, Sissie, she’s been sleepi
ng in my cabin for the past week. She snores, too!”

  “Thet’s different. Miss Pomeroy was a guest onboard Cresswell!”

  “Well, now she’s a guest onboard Dreadnaught.”

  “She didn’t sneak onboard Cresswell in the middle of the night like . . . like a woman of the streets!”

  “Keep your voice down, Sissie. She’ll hear you.”

  “I just bally-well hope she does!”

  I sent Sissie ashore to shop and simmer down for the rest of the morning, while I cleaned out Cresswell’s bilges. It was almost noon when I heard Amyas calling for me from Dreadnaught. I clambered up on deck. He was back in his oily coveralls. His feet were again bare. His mustache ends were cocked up at angles of forty-five degrees from the horizontal. His eyes glowed.

  “Morning, Amyas!”

  “Hullo, old chap. Lovely day, as it were?”

  “Not bad,” I replied, “but Sissie’s still a bit upset.”

  “Still tummy trouble, as it were?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “Well, you can expect that sort of thing in these foreign places, eh?”

  “Of course, that’s what I told her. Sent her shopping. Keep ’em busy . . .”

  “That’s the ticket!”

  “Where’s Miss P? She shopping, too?”

  “Yes, just gone off to bring some flowers.” Amyas gazed down at his feet for a few moments, then shyly looked up again. “They like that sort of thing, you know. Of course it’s a bit awkward at sea, obviously—no flowers, I mean—but I told her I could get some eighth-inch plate and cut and weld some up. Slap a bit of paint on ’em. Never know the difference, as it were.”

  “When you leaving for Venice, Amyas?”

  “Oh, we’re heading for Palma first. We can get . . . I popped the question to Bernice last night.”

  I looked at Amyas, a puzzled expression on my face.

  “Oh, that’s her first name. Nice, eh? Of course she’s accepted, so we’re going to Palma first. It’s not a bad place for doing a spot of refitting . . . and they’ve got an English church there.”

  I still stared at Amyas in silence.

  “Of course you and Miss Saint John are invited to the wedding, old chap. Might be a British cruise ship in . . . I’ll get the engineers along—hold up the swords, as it were, eh?”

  I finally recovered my composure. “Well, delighted, Amyas. When did all this happen?”

  “Last night. She came over and made me a cup of Bovril . . .” Amyas turned and stared along the jetty as he spoke. “Nice little party, she is. Just the ticket, as it were.”

  “If I were you,” I said, “I’d take off for Palma right away. That painter bloke in Formentera is due out of jail tomorrow. He’s built like the bloody Q.E. 2, and when he gets a few noggins inside him he makes a battlewagon look like a bloomin’ ice-cream cart.”

  Amyas grinned. “Oh, yes, Bernice and I have discussed our fine-feathered friend in detail. We’re sailing as soon as she gets back. I don’t have my new mainsail yet. I’ve written home to have it sent on to Venice. We can manage with the old one, though, until the new one comes. Shouldn’t take more than a few months . . .”

  “How does Miss P . . . sorry, Bernice, like the boat, Amyas?”

  “Oh, she thinks it’s home away from home, as it were. Of course, as I told her, it needs a little woman’s touch. She wanted to start painting this morning, but I told her no sense in it until we get the engine refit finished.”

  It was “we” now. I knew Miss Pomeroy had made a hit. Momentarily, a vision of her, still in her Alice-blue dress, her pearls dangling, wielding a huge spanner in the gloomy, dank confines of Dreadnaught’s bilges, passed through my mind. “She seems to be a handy soul,” I said.

  “Yes, she’s sending for her sewing machine from Palma. Says if the new mainsail doesn’t arrive in a few months she’ll sort of make me a new one, as it were.” As Amyas said this he fidgeted nervously. Then he said in a low voice, rapidly, “Ah, here she comes now.”

  I turned to peer down the length of the jetty. I stared. La Pomeroy’s walk was unmistakable—a sort of jerky jiggle, but at first I wasn’t sure that the approaching figure was, in fact, Miss P. The great bunch of flowers she carried were bursts of color held close against the front buttons of a brand-new pair of black-blue overalls, much too big for her tiny frame. On her head she wore Amyas’ best white-covered yachting cap, and on her feet were a pair of new deck slippers.

  “Looks good, eh?” Amyas murmured as La Pomeroy, now, for the first time since I had clapped eyes on her, smiled at me shyly from behind the flower—mascaraless, rougeless, and powderless.

  “Can’t really sail a boat in dresses and things, eh?” Amyas said quietly. “Bought ’em for her this morning. I’ve already showed her through the tool-kit, of course.”

  “Morning, Miss P. Congratulations!” I hollered, as Amyas helped his bride-to-be over the brand-new stern-rail of the sparkling Dreadnaught.

  “Oh dear Tristan I’m so very happy today and of course Sissie and you are coming to our wedding? (giggle)” The first giggle since Formentera.

  “Of course. When’s the big day?”

  Amyas aimed his mustache at me, as his tiny fiancée almost lost her balance trying to reach his cheek and peck it. “Oh, not until after Christmas,” he said. “I wanted it right away, but Bernice . . .” he hugged Miss P’s arm so hard that she seemed to wince, “. . . insists on waiting a while longer. A bit more respectable, as it were.”

  “Yes. Wouldn’t do to look as if you were rushing things, Amyas.”

  “No. Not among these foreigners, anyway. They’re always jumping to conclusions, aren’t they? Funny chaps, but then, what can you expect?”

  “I know. It’s all that spicy food.”

  “Well, of course Bernice and I are going in for good old plain English cooking.”

  “That’s the ticket, Amyas—roast beef, Yorkshire pud and gravy, eh? None of that damned immoral Continental nonsense.”

  “Dear Amy as loves Yorkshire pudding don’t you dear?”

  “Of course. Never know where all that other stuff might lead you.”

  Amyas then half-carried Miss Pomeroy to the rusty gloom of her new home. As they reached the hatchway, Miss P., nervously excited, dropped the flowers through the hatch. They scattered in the oily bilge below.

  “Ohdearwhatapity! (giggle) Well never mind dear you can make some in Palma as you said.”

  “Of course; gives me something to do in between refitting the engine,” replied the engineer-poet to his bride-to-be. “Can’t stay idle . . .” Amyas grinned hugely over at me as he gently lowered Miss P. with one arm into Dreadnaught’s corroded insides. “The devil has work for idle hands, as it were.”

  Sissie was back onboard shortly after. It took another few minutes of argument and reasoning before she came to see that love in any form, anywhere, between any souls, is good. Eventually, after some shy resistance to my persuasion, she accompanied me on deck to call farewell to Amyas and Miss Pomeroy.

  Captain Cupling, as I let go his mooring lines for him, shoved away at a great sweep oar. Silently, little Dreadnaught slid away from the Ibiza mole. Miss P., her face wildly happy, her new overalls already streaked here and there with black oil, her black glistening footsteps trailing over the brand-new yellow paint on deck, was excitedly trying to fit the tattered, black, ancient mainsail to the shining new masts.

  “Oh, deah Miss Pomeroy, oh my deah, I shell so much bally-well look forward to the ceremony! It will be splendidly spiffing!” yelled Sissie as Dreadnaught crept away.

  Amyas, straining at the long oar, looked up at me suddenly, puffing. “Not a lot of wind, as it were, eh?”

  “You’ll get a bit outside, when you clear the point, Amyas!” I hollered.

  “Oh goodbye cheerio awffly thanks for every
thing dear Sissie and Tristan!”

  “Bye bye, Miss P!”

  Sissie and I went to the wedding at the Palma Evangelical Church, just after Christmas. In early 1966 Dreadnaught sailed for Venice. She called at Bonifacio in Corsica, Cagliari in Sardinia, Palermo and Siracusa in Sicily. She sailed from Siracusa in May of ’sixty-six.

  Nothing was ever heard from Dreadnaught again. When I called at Venice in ’sixty-nine, no one had seen her. I know that Amyas Cupling and Miss Pomeroy are in a quiet haven onboard Dreadnaught, still oily and rusty, with Amyas’ painted, eighth-inch welded-steel flowers down below, and the engine still being “refitted.”

  Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  Admit impediments. Love is not love,

  Which alters when it alteration finds,

  Or bends with the remover to remove:

  O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

  That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

  It is a star to every wand’ring bark,

  Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

  Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

  Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

  If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

  Sonnet 116

  —William Shakespeare

  16. The Bending Sickle’s Compass

  A while after Amyas and Miss Pomeroy were married, I lost Nelson and sold Cresswell. Sissie left to meet Willie in Morocco and then go back to Southchester. I returned to Ibiza in late 1967. Between then and late 1968 was a remarkable time for me, but these are not the pages in which to set down those tales.

  In late 1968, after the sale of Cresswell and the loss of Banjo, my twenty-six-foot Folkboat sloop (the loss courtesy of an American film producer, as described in my book, Saga of a Wayward Sailor), I hung around with the father of my crewman, Steve Llewellyn, for a few days while I searched the waterfronts of the Balearic Islands for a delivery job. Much water had passed under the hulls of a couple of dozen sailing craft I had skippered, including the unfortunate Two Brothers, which had foundered en voyage to South America.