We Saw The Sea

by John Winton

  “Not to that barmaid?”

  “You heard about that? No, some admiral’s offspring, I heard.”

  “That’s more like Pete. Incidentally, this is something I do know hot from the press. Have you heard about The Bodger?”

  “No? What about him?”

  “Passed over!”

  “What!”

  “It’s a fact. Someone told me it was the report he got from Barsetshire that did it.”

  “But I thought he was the blue-eyed boy there! “

  “So he was, but you remember what a mad-house that ship was. The Bodger was getting on a stinker until one day about a year after we left when old Gregson suddenly announced that he wanted all cadets to be taught how to breed red setters as part of their syllabus.”

  “Name of a name!”

  “Precisely. The Bodger gave a merry laugh and then suddenly realized that the Old Man was deadly serious. It was just after a mess dinner, The Bodger had just listened to Dickie Gilpin sounding off about the Yellow Peril, he had a few grogs under his belt, so The Bodger ups and tells old Gregson that he had no objection whatsoever to cadets being taught how to breed red setters, he wondered nobody had thought of it before, they could breed red setters, white setters and sky blue pink setters for all he cared but until the appropriate B.R.s arrived he was going to stick to the syllabus as laid down.”

  “Cor, the Old Man wouldn’t like that.”

  “Man, that’s the understatement of the year. Gregson retired in a huff and when he came to write up The Bodger’s confidential report he not only underlined it in red he wrote the whole damn lot in red ink. So that was that. There was a Caesar, when comes such another? I saw in the C.W. List yesterday that he’s been appointed Resident Naval Officer in Nassau.”

  “Well, that should suit The Bodger.”

  “Not that Nassau. The one in the Cook Islands. In the South Pacific.”

  “God.”

  “It’s rugged luck all right. You know, Mike, the more I look at it the more I’m convinced that to succeed in the Service you’ve got to humour madmen. Now if The Bodger had said ‘Certainly sir, and as you’re our only expert at the moment on breeding red setters, would you mind giving the first lectures until the official books arrive and the rest of us get into the routine?’ or words to that effect, the old boy would have been tickled pink and instead of being passed over The Bodger would probably be a Captain himself by now.”

  “By the way,” Michael said, “did you see that our old friend Dickie Gilpin got promoted to Captain?”

  “Yes, and from what I hear he’s all set to go through for Fleet Board for Admiral, and heaven help anyone who stands in his way. All set to be First Sea Lord when the time comes. They already call him The Dauphin up at the Admiralty, I gather. My name is Richard St Clair Gilpin, what’s your hobby, just about describes him.”

  “Someone told me he got married recently.”

  “Yes, guess who to? Seamus Dogpit’s daughter. You remember Seamus, the old buffer at the Interview. Dickie never misses a trick.”

  “Something tells me we’re being a bit catty. As bad as women in fact.”

  “Have you two quite finished talking shop?” Mary asked.

  “Quite finished, my dear Mary,” Paul said, “and as this is a deadly party, I can’t think what’s happened to Sonia since she teamed up with that fellow in the Fusiliers, her parties always used to be good for at least one rape and a couple of unnatural offences to speak of nothing better, she’s quite gone to the dogs, I think we’ll all say our tender good-byes and hop round to the Grenadier for a pint with the proletariat. Coming, Anne?”

  “But Paul, I came with Stephen.”

  “So?”

  “I can’t just go off and leave him.”

  “Why ever not? That’s what boy-friends are for. No self-respecting girl ever expects to be taken away from a party by the man who brought her. No girl except Mary, that is. You are self-respecting, aren’t you, Mary? She always comes with Michael and wherever they go they sit and make eyes at each other and tell each other it’s too good to last and a very good line it is too. Breaks the shock when it comes.” Paul took Anne firmly by the hand and forced his way over to the door. Michael and Mary caught him up as he was saying his tender good-byes.

  “Dear Sonia,” he was saying, “if you must live in sin with the brutal and licentious Fusiliery you might at least preserve the decencies and make him take his shaving soap out of your wash-cabinet. Of course I looked. I always look. Good-bye all.”

  “Is he always like this?” Anne asked Michael.

  “Never mind, he’s not serious.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind.”

  Michael groaned.

  “Come on,” Paul said. “Stop dithering and we might have time for what my old friend Raymond Ball used to call a little bit of je ne sais quoi.’’

  “What’s that, Paul?” Anne asked.

  “Never you mind. Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find.”

  Michael groaned again.

  2

  Inside the Admiralty, big wheels moved, small wheels spun and tiny wheels made tea. The mighty organism gave a shiver and a heave and belched forth a buff envelope which dropped through the Hobbes’s front door and expired on the door mat.

  The envelope contained a loose folder of papers which gave Michael Hobbes some diverting reading.

  The first sheet informed Michael that he should already have been inoculated, vaccinated or otherwise safeguarded against cholera, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, tetanus and dysentery. The reverse side of the sheet listed times and places in Newcastle where injections were given. Across the bottom of the page a rubber stamp asked of Michael: “Has your baby been immunized?”

  Next was a memo from A.D. of A.M.R.O.B. (C) to Ass. P. Sec. CINC EASTMED STRIKLANTNORD. It was handwritten in green ink and enquired--”What time does Mugsy usually get back from lunch?”

  The third and fourth sheets were cuttings from The Sporting Times giving the runners, jockeys and ante-post prices at Bogside, Lingfield and Pontefract.

  The contents of the folder were completed by a copy of the Highway Code, an F.A. Cup Final programme, a packet of Jescot Jim dahlia seeds and a coloured picture of St Stephen the Martyr being stoned.

  The whole collection of papers gave the impression that it had been compiled by a civil servant about to go on holiday who had thought it an excellent opportunity to clear out his trays.

  The last and smallest piece of paper, which had been left behind when Michael tipped out the rest, informed Michael that he was appointed Lieutenant, Royal Navy, to H.M.S. Carousel, additional for passage and vice Rowlands, to join H.M.T. Astrakhan in uniform at Southampton catching the boat train leaving Waterloo at noon. He was to acknowledge receipt of these instructions forthwith to the Director of Movements, Admiralty, and to the Commanding Officer, H.M.S. Carousel, taking care to furnish his address.

  Michael rang up Mary.

  “Hullo, is that you?” Michael sometimes wished he was more fluent at starting telephone conversations.

  “Yes, it’s me, darling, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, how are you?”

  “You don’t sound fine. Has something happened?”

  “My thing from the Admiralty has come.”

  “Oh Michael. What is it?”

  “It’s Carousel. A cruiser. At least, I suppose you could call it a cruiser.”

  “Where is she? In the Home Fleet?”

  “No, she’s gone out to the Far East.”

  “The Far East! Michael!”

  “I know. . .

  “When do you have to go?”

  “Now don’t get all worked up about it. . .

  “When, Michael?”

  “The seventeenth. A week on Friday.”

  “A week! “

  “Yes. Honestly Mary, there’s no need to get all steamed up just because. . .

  Michael at last hung up quickly, knowing that Ma
ry was about to burst into tears. He felt vaguely piqued by her attitude; anyone would think he was going on a suicide mission of no return instead of taking up a perfectly normal appointment in a perfectly normal ship which happened to be at the other end of nowhere. Michael went away to look up Hong Kong in the atlas.

  Paul Vincent received his appointment by the afternoon post. His had no gay portfolio attachments but consisted of a single sheet of paper: Paul was appointed Lieutenant (E), Royal Navy, to H.M.S. Carousel, additional for passage and vice Cardew. The appointment was written in stern handwriting, with hard vicious strokes of the pen, as though it had been written by a civil servant just returned from holiday.

  Paul read the appointment watched by his mother and Cedric, her stockbroker. Mrs Vincent was not pleased when she was told.

  “Far East!” she said. “They must be mad! The Van Baxters will be furious. I promised them we would all be at Sandra’s wedding. I’m going to give Seamus a ring and tell him not to be such an idiot! What was the name of the ship that stupid man at the Admiralty promised you, darling? Now, I wonder what Seamus’s number is? I used to know them all. . .

  “Mother,” Paul said firmly, “you’ll telephone your boyfriends at the Admiralty over my dead body.”

  “And over mine,” said Cedric heartily.

  “Cedric!”

  “I’m sorry Louise, but for once I entirely agree with your son. It would be most bad policy to approach anyone at the Admiralty over this. It would smack of nepotism, and rightly so. In any case, it will do Paul a power of good to serve in the Far East. Put the fear of God into the Chinks too, I’ve no doubt.”

  Paul wanted to tell Anne the news immediately but there were disadvantages to telephoning her. She had only just passed her secretarial examinations and worked in a room full of girls under the supervision of a lady called Mrs Grant. Mrs Grant watched over her girls as zealously as though they were inmates of a Turkish seraglio and she allowed no private telephone calls during working hours and certainly none from young men. While Mrs Grant knew of no case where a seduction had actually taken place over the telephone she knew of many where the telephone had been the means to the end; she was determined that hers would be one typists’ pool at least which would not feature in the Sunday newspapers.

  On second thoughts, Paul considered that it was worth trying. This was a special occasion, after all.

  Paul dialled and waited. The telephone was answered by a Wagnerian voice which could only belong to Mrs Grant.

  “The RossCommon-Rogers Copying Agency,” boomed The Voice, as though it were announcing the twilight of the gods.

  “Is that Mrs Grant speaking?”

  “It is.”

  “Mrs Grant, how nice to have the opportunity of speaking to you! I’ve heard so much about you. . . “

  “Young man, what do you want?”

  “Well, I really wanted to speak to Miss Maconochie. . . .”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Please let me explain, Mrs Grant. This is her brother speaking and I have something to tell her which is extremely delicate and private. There’s been some trouble. . .”

  “I see,” said Mrs Grant, in an ominous voice.

  “Oh no, it’s nothing like that, I can assure you. . .

  “Like what, young man?”

  “It’s something she should know right away, ma’am. I’m sure you would understand if you knew the whole story.”

  “Very well,” Mrs Grant said in a mollified tone. “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Mr Vin-Maconochie. Just say it’s Paul calling, please.”

  “Paul?”

  “Yes please, ma’am.”

  Paul noticed that the clicking of typewriters in the background had stopped. He heard Mrs Grant calling out Anne’s name. He could imagine the other girls staring at each other at this unprecedented breach of the pool’s regulations. Then he heard Anne, breathless and nervous.

  “Paul, you clown, I told you not. . .”

  “Quiet, wench. We have matters of great pith and moment to discuss. First let me say that I love you. . . .”

  “Paul,” Anne whispered desperately, “they’re all looking at me.”

  “Let ’em look. Honey, my appointment has come. It’s to Carousel. She’s in the Far East.”

  “The Far East! “

  “Don’t shout. They’re all listening to you too, I don’t doubt. Meet me tonight and I’ll tell you all about it. By the statue of Richard the Lionheart.”

  “Paul, where on earth’s that?”

  “Six o’clock. Don’t be late. Cedric’s giving a party tonight and he’s invited us. No more now, Mrs Grant will be pawing at the deck and champing. I love you very much. Good-bye.”

  “But Paul. . .

  “Remember Mrs Grant!”

  Paul hung up with a sense of a mission well accomplished.

  He had broken the Grant Barrier, compared with which the sound barrier was a mere hurdle, he had told Anne he loved her and he had arranged to meet her that evening. Romeo himself could have done no more.

  Anne finished work at half-past five. She repaired her make-up, washed her hands, telephoned her mother to say she would be late, bought a new lipstick and asked a policeman the way to the statue of Richard the Lionheart and arrived at ten minutes past six. She was annoyed when she discovered that the statue was near her office on Millbank and she must have passed Paul at least once but she did not allow him to notice it.

  “Come on,” said Paul, brusquely. “We’re picking Michael and Mary up on the way and they’re always early.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Paul.”

  “That’s all right. Most girls would have still been looking. Who is this person Mrs Grant? Anyone would think I was trying to ring up the Kremlin!”

  “Oh, she was sweet when you rang off. She wanted to know if I was in any trouble and could she help. I hadn’t the heart to deceive her so I told her about you. She wishes you luck.”

  “That’s big of her.”

  “She said she guessed what was going on but she liked your voice, although she didn’t believe a word you said.” Paul breathed over his knuckles and brushed them on his lapel. He was flattered to be told that he could charm women over the telephone.

  “Bully for Mrs Grant,” he said. “I told Michael that we’d meet them outside St Martin-in-the-Fields. I insisted on meeting you here and he insisted on meeting Mary where he always meets her so we split the difference. He’s a most unoriginal chap. He always meets his woman in the same old place. He must know the pavement outside Swan and Edgars like the back of his hand.”

  Anne felt a momentary twinge of envy. She would have loved to have been a woman who always met Paul in the same old place.

  Michael and Mary were waiting on the steps of St Martin’s amongst the home-rushing crowds, the pigeons overhead, and the newspaper sellers shouting their curious international language.

  “Right,” said Paul. “Let’s get a bus du côté de chez Cedric.”

  Cedric lived in Stanhope Gate with his butler Thomas and his collections. Cedric was a kleptomaniac, though in perfect taste, and his collections were famous. His collection of glassware and drinking cups rested in Hepplewhite cabinets and enjoyed an international reputation. Cedric had champagne glasses of Venetian glass, waxed leather blackjacks with silver rims, enamelled humpers, Georgian pewter tankards, and a scintillating array of punchbowls, chalices, tumblers and sets of glasses of soda metal and glass of lead with their stems fluted, chased, knobbed, serpentine, quatre-foiled and engraved. Cedric’s collection was a museum dedicated to the art of drinking; his friends from the London clubs made pious pilgrimages to see it. Country Life published an article on it and thereafter Cedric received letters from elderly ladies in Perth, Western Australia, enquiring whether his collection included the Holy Grail and postcards from schoolgirls in Weston-super-Mare asking if he possessed the human skull from which Darius, the Great King of Persia, was wont to drink the b
lood of his slaughtered enemies.

  Cedric had other collections, of snuff boxes, dragon china, walking-sticks, bullfight posters, Japanese armour, spinning-wheels and clockwork toys. He also had a large collection of friends whom he was pleased to invite to his house and to whom he explained his collections with their histories. Cedric was erudite without being pedantic and an arbiter of good manners who still preferred champagne from a tankard because it brought out the flavour. “Like Dr Johnson,” Paul said, “only not so fat and argumentative.”

  Cedric himself met them at the door. He looked sternly at Michael.

  “Never get into a habit with one woman, my boy,” he said. “Before you know where you are you’ll wake up and find yourself married to them and there’s no greater habit than that. You may laugh. I’ve seen it happen too often.”

  Thomas, Cedric’s butler, who looked and spoke like an ex-flyweight champion of Donegal, poured sherry and madeira from cut-glass decanters which were part of the collection and Mrs Vincent, wearing a flame-coloured dress with a high collar, took Michael under her wing.

  “Paul, darling you know lots of people, but you don’t, Michael, so let me introduce you. Let’s see. There’s that round man from the B.B.C. whose name I can never remember. He won’t do. The Admiralty have just banned his book about the Wrens. Then there’s that big stuffed dummy who advertises that nauseating whisky ... I know.”

  Mrs Vincent led Michael and Mary towards a tall man who was standing next to one of the most beautiful women Michael had ever seen but who was looking quizzically at his glass as though he were wondering how soon he could get it refilled. The man looked up as Michael approached. The face was unmistakable. It was Lieutenant Commander Robert Bollinger Badger, Royal Navy, otherwise known as The Bodger.

  “Good God,” The Bodger said. “It’s Hobbes.”