All The Nice Girls (12 page)

Patricia responded correctly but as emotionlessly as though she were running the gauntlet of a street full of flag-sellers. After half an hour, when Dagwood had even succeeded in rousing himself, Patricia said: ‘What do you want from me?’

Dagwood paused, arrested in full stride. The girl was full of his shush kebab and his burgundy. She was lying, full length but half nude, on his hearthrug. She asked him what he wanted from her.

It was an unanswerable question. Dagwood got up, brushed off the knees of his trousers.

‘How about some coffee?’ he said.

The girl he had knocked down outside the main office block continued to occupy Dagwood’s mind. True, their two previous meetings had not been propitious. But still . . . but still, Dagwood sensed subconsciously that the final words had not been said, on either side. Dagwood decided he should try and make amends. There was no harm in proffering the olive branch, even if he subsequently had it wrapped round his neck. Dagwood straightened his tie, smoothed down his hair, and polished his shoes by rubbing them up and down against the opposite trouser leg.

‘What job are you applying for?’ Ollie enquired.

Dagwood turned on him. ‘Just because you go round looking like a tramp, that’s no reason why everyone else should!’

‘Pardon me,’ said Ollie, not in the least abashed.

Dagwood was astonished to recognise his own nervousness as he descended the stairs towards Sir Rollo’s office. He was even more astonished to find, seated in the small office which served as an antechamber for the throne room in which Sir Rollo sat in awful majesty, a quite middle-aged woman with grey hair tied in a ragged bun.

‘Yes?’

Dagwood hesitated. ‘I really wanted to see Sir Rollo’s private secretary.’

‘That’s me.’

‘Oh, but wasn’t there a
girl
doing the job?’

The woman bristled. ‘I have been Sir Rollo’s private secretary for fifteen years.’

‘You weren’t doing it last week,’ Dagwood insisted.

‘I had ‘flu last week. Sir Rollo’s daughter did temporary work in my absence.’

‘And she’s gone now?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s not hurt, is she?’ Dagwood asked, anxiously.

‘Hurt?’ The woman looked baffled. ‘Why should she be hurt, may I ask? She was only here on a temporary basis . . .’

‘I’m sorry. You misunderstood me.’ Dagwood was conscious, from the curious look the woman gave him, that he had already said far, far too much. ‘Never mind, I may look in later . . .’ he ended, vaguely, and backed towards the door, opened it and slid outside, leaving Sir Rollo’s private secretary gazing after him with a look of amazement.

‘Did you get the job?’ said Ollie.

‘Oh for God’s sake, Ollie, let’s drop the subject. Anything wildly exciting happening today?’

‘They finished taking the soft patch off last night and they’re taking out the main engines this morning. That’s worth looking at, if you’ve never seen it done before.’

The major items of the submarine’s machinery, such as the main diesel engines and the main electric motors, were too large to be moved through any of the submarine’s hatches. The problem of first installing them had been solved by putting them in place before the hull was complete, in effect by building the submarine round them. Once in place, they could only be taken out by burning away a long rectangular section of the pressure hull above the engine room. This removable section of the pressure hull was called officially the closing plate, but it was always known colloquially in the Submarine Service as the Soft Patch, or the Sunshine Roof.

Dagwood had never seen a submarine’s closing plate off before and he was immediately struck by the size of the compartment which had contained the main engines. Now that all the machinery had been removed, the space looked as big as a ballroom.

‘You could have a dinner dance and social in there,’ he said to Sam Sollarwood, the foreman of electrical fitters, who was standing on the dockside watching the awkward mass of the second main diesel engine being slung upwards.

‘Aye, it makes you wonder where all the space goes to, when you see it like that,’ said Sam Sollarwood.

Sam Sollarwood was one of the yard personalities whom Dagwood was beginning to be able to pick out. The great tide of figures which eddied about the yard at certain times of the day was beginning to have here and there an individual face. Harvey McNichol & Drummond’s, being a feudal society, had the feudal rigidity of dress and headgear - particularly headgear. An ordinary workman might wear a grubby cloth cap or a grimy beret, but no man in any position of authority would ever have dreamed of setting foot inside the yard without his caste headdress. The caste rules were unwritten but as inflexible as the laws of the Medes and the Persians: by tradition, charge hands and above wore brown cloth caps; foremen and above wore light grey cloth caps with long peaks; managers and above wore brown trilbies; while directors, above whom there was nobody but God, wore black bowlers.

Dagwood and Ollie thought it a very good system; at least they always knew the sort of man they were talking to, even if they did not know his name. They decided to join the scheme. Ollie wore a conservative brown Gieves trilby but Dagwood sported a green deerstalker, covered with fishing flies, which had once belonged to his father. The deerstalker’s debut in the yard aroused a great deal of comment. Workmen turned and gaped, as though Dagwood were wearing a diamond tiara. The apprentices who played football beside the plate shop in the lunch hour stopped their game to jeer and catcall. The typists on their way to and from the main office block tittered and dug each other in the ribs. But gradually the deerstalker came to be tolerated and, furthermore, associated with Dagwood. It was his trademark. Everyone knew who he was because of his hat. Anyone who wanted

Dagwood would never enquire after the Electrical Officer of H.M.S.
Seahorse
but would simply ask: ‘ ‘Ave ya seen t’lad wi’t Sherlock ‘Olmes ‘at ‘ereabout?’

Sam Sollarwood therefore recognised Dagwood without even looking at his face, and prepared for a chat. Like all the foremen Dagwood had ever met, Sam Sollarwood was always ready for a gossip. Dagwood made a good audience. He had never heard the standard yard jokes nor the perennial yard grouses. Dagwood did not mind listening because he found that there was a practical advantage in gossiping with the foremen. It taught him much about the yard and its people; it also, Dagwood suspected, gave him a much more accurate picture of the real progress of
Seahorse
’s refit than the stilted phrases of the progress meetings called by the yard managers.

It was Sam Sollarwood who told Dagwood the truth about George, the shambling figure in dirty brown overalls and grey cloth cap whom Dagwood saw about the yard every day and whom everybody seemed to know. Dagwood had noticed that nobody passed George by without a word. Even Sir Rollo said good day to him. It was plain that, so far as Harvey McNichol & Drummond were concerned, George was a member of the aristocracy.

‘Who is that fellow?’ Dagwood asked Sam Sollarwood one morning, after George had just passed them, acknowledging salutes to right and left. By his white hair and staggering gait, Dagwood judged that George must be at least eighty, possibly even ninety.

‘Aye, that’s Young George,’ said Sam Sollarwood, in a tone of respect.

‘‘
Young
George!’

‘Aye. Old George, his father, had the job afore him.’

‘What job is that?’

‘Chain grubber.’

‘What on earth’s a chain grubber?’

‘He looks up at ship when she’s being built and says, “Aye,” and then goes away and fixes chains for t’launching. Y’see, when we launch a ship from this yard, the river’s too narrow to just let it go. We have to check it wi’chains. But . . . How many chains? If you put too many, happen ship’ll not go at all. If you put too few, happen’ ship’ll go clear over to Maxwells’.’ Sam chuckled. ‘That nearly happened once. Bout five year ago when we launched
Empress of Ethiopia
. Sir Rollo had an idea, y’see. Progress, he said, that’s the thing. We must progress. We must keep up wi’ modern methods.
George’s
methods are out-a-date, he said. So they had some
experts
down here.’ Sam snorted contemptuously. ‘Lot of young puppies wi’ slide rules crawling about place. They measured owt and worked out owt and told Sir Rollo how many chains he’d need. Sir Rollo says fine, just do that. Come launching day, great crowd arrives, Lady Muck swings bottle, away goes ‘Empress’ and keeps
on
goin’! Tugs only just get a hold of her afore she runs right up on t’ Maxwells’ slip!
George
was back on t’job very next day. Aye, that would have been a reet laugh, if she’d run up Maxwells’ slip!’

Maxwells’ were Harvey McNichol & Drummond’s closest and fiercest rivals. Their yard lay directly opposite, on the other side of the river. For more than two hundred years the two firms had eyed each other jealously, like Montagu and Capulet. The rivalry between the firms was sometimes reflected in the city of Oozemouth; when both firms were submitting tenders for the same contract, Oozemouth was like a city under martial law. To lose a contract to Clydeside, Merseyside or Tyneside would have been a severe blow to Harvey McNichol & Drummond’s; but to lose one to Maxwells’ was like a mortal wound. Although Dagwood and Ollie had only been in the yard a very short time, they still felt a certain reflected
esprit de corps
for Harvey McNichol & Drummond, enough to be shocked and dismayed when, a few weeks after
Seahorse
’s refit began, the news of Maxwells’ new contracts broke.

The story was on the front page of the morning paper.

Maxwells’ managing director had returned from a sales- promotion trip with orders for a 25,000 ton passenger liner, to be called the
Mombasa Castle
, and for a Dutch tanker of 60,000 tons. Maxwells had obtained the orders by cutting their profits almost to nothing and by promising a firm completion date, covered by a penalty clause in the contracts, which they had achieved by agreeing a two-year strike amnesty with the unions. The two ships would keep Maxwells and their sub-contractors in full employment for at least three years.

‘That’s wiped their eyes a bit,’ said Ollie, when he saw the headlines.

‘I wonder how they’re taking it?’ said Dagwood.

Sam Sollarwood was taking it very hardly. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, bitterly. ‘We’re living in t’past in this firm. Think of what we’ve got after that Norwegian tanker is finished. Nowt but two dredgers for Docks and Harbour Board!’ Sam’s face clouded. ‘I remember when they got the order for them. They were that pleased, ye’d think it were two
Queen Marys
we were going to build!’

Dagwood sensed in Sam’s manner an atavistic fear of the days of the depression. Sam had been born within sight of Harvey McNichol & Drummond’s cranes and had worked in their yard since he was a boy. As a young apprentice he could remember his father lying in bed until midday because there was no work to go to. He could remember the whole family sitting down to bread and tea in the evenings. Sam himself now had a small house, a small car and two children coming up for grammar school but he kept looking over his shoulder at the past as an abyss into which he might one day fall, like his father, at a word from Sir Rollo.

Dagwood could understand Sam Sollarwood’s attitude (a firm of the standing of Harvey McNichol & Drummond rejoicing over a contract for two river dredgers was as ludicrous as Rolls Royce celebrating an order for two motor lawnmowers), but he was quite baffled by Mr McGillvray’s, - when he mentioned the subject of Maxwells’ new contract at lunch time. As a senior engineering ship manager and one of Sir Rollo’s right-hand men, Mr McGillvray could be expected to take a serious view of their chief rival’s success. But, curiously, it was not so.

‘Och,
them
,’ said Mr McGillvray, derisively. ‘They go round touting for business like they were selling stockings, or something.’

‘But surely that’s not such a bad idea, if it does the trick,’ Dagwood pointed out.

‘We don’t have to tout for business. We have a reputation. This firm was started 1750 and everybody knows about us. Everybody knows about us. Everybody knows we build first- class ships here.’

‘They may
know
about them,’ said Dagwood, ‘but they’ve stopped
buying
them, haven’t they?’

Mr McGillvray went red. ‘Look laddie,’ he said. ‘Just run along and mind your submarine and leave us to mind our shipyard.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dagwood muttered.

Mr Burlap, the electrical ship manager, took a more moderate view. When Dagwood reached the door of his office, he was nearly knocked down by a crowd of men who erupted from Mr Burlap’s office like reporters rushing to catch the last edition.

‘Who were they?’ Dagwood asked.

Mr Burlap smiled wearily. ‘The shop stewards, believe it or not. They want to know what we’re doing about Maxwells’ new order. They also want to know what Harvey McNichol & Drummond are doing about building nuclear submarines. I ask you! ‘

‘Why shouldn’t Harvey McNichol and Drummond build nuclear submarines?’

Mr Burlap frowned. It appeared to be a new thought for him. ‘Well, now I come to think of it, I suppose there really isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t. I don’t think anybody’s thought of it, to tell you the truth. It would cost a couple of million at least to tool up the yard for them, but after that. . .’ Mr Burlap’s voice trailed away; he appeared to be contemplating a new and wonderful horizon.

‘What do you think of this Maxwells business?’

Mr Burlap clasped his hands together, blew through them, and then unfolded them in a gesture of futility. ‘Nobody minds so much about the tanker. They’ll keep everyone in work but they won’t make a penny out of it. We build a tanker every eighteen months or so but whoever hears about tankers, unless they happen to blow up or run aground? It’s passenger ships, the
Mombasa Castle
, that’s the sort of thing we make money and prestige on. We haven’t built a passenger ship since the
Empress of Ethiopia
four years ago. I don’t know where we’re all headed for, I really don’t!’