We Joined The Navy (16 page)

One further solution was employed by Raymond Ball who never scrubbed decks but sat in the cadets’ heads and read a book instead. His face had never been seen at Both Watches and consequently its absence was never remarked. Even this solution was finally defeated by the Chief G.I. who, needing some hands one morning to get up spare bedding, went along to the cadets’ heads and shouted ‘Fire! Fire!’ Raymond Ball and a handful of others tumbled headlong into the Chief G.I.’s arms.

On the evening before
Barsetshire
reached Gibraltar, her first foreign port of the cruise, the P.M.O. gave a lecture and film show to the junior cadets. The P.M.O’s lecture and film-show was famous in the training cruiser. Some of the officers on the staff attended it every cruise; they looked forward to it, as concert-goers look forward to the Promenade Concerts every year.

The P.M.O. was six feet tall, with iron grey hair and blue eyes. He was an Irishman from County Cork, a gentle and unsuspicious man by nature. Twenty years in the Navy, listening to sailors describe their complaints, had made him cynical, but had not erased the last traces of his native brogue. The P.M.O. still spoke with a slight lisp and occasionally introduced an aspirate into his dental consonants.

‘Tomorrow we’ll be getting to Gibraltar’ said the P.M.O. to the junior cadets, ‘and I’ve no doubt at all that some of you’ll be putting your private parts where I wouldn’t be putting my walking-stick. So let me be saying at the start that I’m not meaning to give you any advice. Nobody takes the least bit of notice of advice, and nor they should. You’ll not be the first to go ashore in Gib and you’ll not be the last. I’m telling ye now some of the things I’ve noticed in the past and which might be of use to you to know. Whether you take any notice of them at all is up to you entirely.’

The P.M.O. opened a sheaf of notes and spread them out on a table.

‘There’s a very awkward and unpleasant disease which people catch in the Mediterranean. It’s a form of dysentery and it’s known as the Malta Dog. Some people catch it because they’re not used to the water, or because they’ve eaten something which doesn’t agree with them. You can catch it from shellfish or from meat that’s a bit too old. So when you go ashore to have a meal, watch out for things like prawns or lobsters or greens that have not been washed. If you do get it, come along to the Sick Bay and we’ll give you some cement. Everybody has their own remedies. I always take a glass of equal parts of port and brandy.

‘It’ll be a bit hotter from now on than most of ye’re used to. Whenever you’re in a hot climate you have to take extra care to keep yourself clean. You’ll have to wash yourself more often or you’ll get rashes and toe rot.

‘I’ll not be telling ye never to sleep with strange women. That’s a thing that every man has to decide for himself and the sooner the better. But if you do decide to have a little bit of excitement, don’t be thinkin’ ye’re giving the poor frustrated girl the one night of delirious joy in her drab and dreary existence. Not at all. Ye’re a part of the rent, or just a little bit on the groceries bill, or something to keep the butcher happy for a while. There’ll be two types. Either she’ll tell you the price straight away or she’ll stay quiet and look at ye. If it’s the first, then you’re clear where you stand. It’s the second you have to be careful of. She’ll be wondering how much you’re good for and she’ll likely overestimate a little and you’ll have to beat her down and there’s no more degrading sight than a naval officer haggling with a woman over the price of a little bit of copulation.’

The Bodger sat in the front row, restraining his laughter. As a newcomer to the ship, he had never before heard the P.M.O.’s lecture and he now realised that he had been missing the performance of a natural showman. The P.M.O.’s droll delivery and perfect timing might have made him famous on the stage.

‘Now I’ll come to the bit ye’ll all be wanting to hear,’ said the P.M.O. solemnly. ‘The chances of catchin’ something. I’ll be frank with you. There’s no real safeguard against venereal disease except total abstinence, just as there’s no real safeguard against getting drunk except not drinkin’. But it would be a poor world without women and drink, would it not? The next best thing to abstinence is continence. If you can’t contain yourself, then at least control yourself. And take care. My Chief Nightingale up at the Sick Bay will be delighted to fix you up. I can’t be tellin’ ye that too often.

The P.M.O. put away his notes in his pocket.

‘All I’ve been tellin’ ye,’ he went on, ‘goes all to hell if you’ve been drinkin’ too much. If you’re drunk, you’ll behave like an animal and an animal has never heard of birth control. It’s easily done. Several of you go ashore together. On the way you have a drop to drink until one of you has a drop too much. He’s the one we’ll call Paddy. When you all decide to go, Paddy wants to stay where he is, where it’s warm and he can see the women. He won’t be wantin’ to be pushed into the cold where there’s no beer and no women. So he stays where he is and the rest of you go on without him. From that minute, Paddy is half-way towards the Sick Bay. Now that’ll be enough from me. I’ve got some films to show you which’ll let ye see what happens to Paddy after you’ve left him. They’ll not need any comment from me so I’ll leave ye to them. I tried to get you the ones they show to the Wrens but they’re booked up for years ahead so you’ll just have to make do with these.’

The P.M.O. left the messdeck. After everyone else had sat down again The Bodger remained standing.

‘Before we see the P.M.O.’s blue films,’ he said, ‘I want to emphasise what the P.M.O. said on the subject of liquor. Most of the local drinks in the Mediterranean are an acquired taste. Stuff like Spanish brandy, absinthe, ouzo and arrack are drunk by the local inhabitants by the quart. But if you start drinking them you’ll get drunk very quickly. Some of the worst stuff will not only make you drunk, it may send you blind. In the old days they used to sell a white stick with every crate of it. Things are not so bad now as they used to be, but even now quite a lot of the local hooch will do you a power of no good. Stick to sherry or beer. Sherry is very cheap in Gibraltar and Spain and you can get some first class stuff for very little compared with what you would have to pay for it in England. That’s all I have to say on that. Now for the P.M.O.’s ciné bleu.’

As she made her stately way down to her berth,
Barsetshire
bore up under the scrutiny of the other British and American ships in the harbour like a dowager at a reception who knows that she is probably the eldest lady present but is sure that her pearls are still the best in the room. Her white scrubbed quarterdeck, her burnished and brushed guard and band, and the slow ripple of water past the grey side in the golden Mediterranean early morning, completed a picture which had not been wonderfully created by an artist but by a set of instructions embellished by a tradition. Each part of the picture, each member of
Barsetshire’s
ship’s company was intent on his own role and hardly conscious of the effect which the whole achieved, but together they lifted the heads of the American sailors, leaning over the guard rails and chewing their morning gum, and made them listen to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ which
Barsetshire
’s band were playing in their honour, and look at
Barsetshire
herself with respect.

Gibraltar was both the start and the finish of a foreign commission in one of H.M. Ships. Every ship on her way to the Mediterranean, South Atlantic, East Indies or Far Eastern Stations counted her time properly abroad from the day she entered Gibraltar. No ship on her way home passed through the Straits without calling there. It was the first portal to the east and the last milestone before home. Most of the sailors ashore in Gibraltar were therefore fresh from home and enjoying their first taste of a foreign port or on their way back to England and enjoying their last visit to a foreign port. The citizens of Gibraltar were subjected to the constant merry-making of ever-renewing, never-tiring hordes of sailors.

The novelty of the celebrations wore off for the Gibraltarians some time early in the nineteenth century. Since then they have watched the antics of the Royal Navy ashore in their citadel follow an ancient and time-honoured pattern. Beer bottles bearing traditional labels sail through the windows of the same bars. The same cars are overturned. The pavements in Main Street have been worn thin by the waiting boots of innumerable patrols. The Naval Provost Marshal has been issuing identical warnings for over a century and the longest-standing and most eagerly read column in the Gibraltar press is the one dealing with the outrages of sailors. When the Americans began to come to Gibraltar, some of the more wishful-thinking of the Gibraltarians hoped that times would change but experience showed that the American sailors ashore behaved much like the British except that they were, if anything, more thorough in anything they attempted and more generous in the payment of compensation. In the process of time the more philosophical Gibraltarians have grown accustomed to the intoxicated sailor and accept him for the trade he brings; they regard the nightly wassail in Main Street as one of the penalties of living in a gateway to the East. An entrance to a main road must expect its share of traffic incidents.

None of the junior cadets had been to Gibraltar before but they were all inheritors of an extensive folk-lore of visits there in other ships and in other cruises which was passed on to them by the Instructors and by the senior cadets. The Chief G.I., in particular, seemed to have brought so much trade to the local trades and professions of Gibraltar and La Linea that some of the junior cadets wondered why he was not made a Freeman.

The Chief G.I. collected the leave cards when the cadet libertymen mustered on the upper deck for inspection.

‘All off ashore?’ he asked sardonically, and unnecessarily.

‘You’ll have to go across the border if you want to get your hand on it. You won’t get a bit this side. Fifty pesetas, and then you’ll be seen off.’

‘A bit of what?’ asked George Dewberry wonderingly.

‘A bit of crumpet’ said Raymond Ball.

‘Crumpet?’

‘Skip it.’

‘That reminds me’ said Paul. ‘Did you get our passes, Mike?’

‘Yep. The Bodger gave them to me. You all owe me two bob.’

‘Libertymen carry on down into the boat’ said the Chief G.I. ‘Don’t all rush at once.’

‘I wonder which of us will be Paddy?’

‘I reckon George Dewberry is our best bet’ said Raymond Ball.

‘I don’t see Trog Maconochie anywhere’ said Paul.

‘He’s looking for his belt. Little does he know I’m wearing it.’

‘How shall we play it this evening?’

‘Well’ said Paul, ‘I vote we have something to drink first, and then something to eat, and then a little more to drink and by that time it’ll be time to go across the border.’

‘The Bodger told me there’s not much point in going across before ten and it’s a good idea to get back before the border closes at one. Otherwise they keep you in a Spanish jail for months while they find out from Cadiz what to do with you.’

‘I expect he knows by experience. I bet The Bodger’ll be good for the woman’s rent, rates, laundry and groceries and probably educate one of the children as well.’

In the first few hundred yards from the landing stage the cadets met more American patrols than Gibraltarians, but once up the steps and into Main Street they found themselves swallowed up in the beginnings of an evening which Gibraltar had come to know very well.

The bars were all similar. They had swing doors, a band with a female trumpeter on a dais, and they were full of sailors. The bars sounded the same, with the jarring notes of a trumpet, drums and castanets, shouts and songs and the accumulated sound of voices talking, bottles clinking and shuffling feet. In the street, bullfight posters were pasted on the blank spaces of the wall by a lottery stand. The shops offered highly coloured rugs, cigarette lighters, cameras, clocks, shirts, watches, bales of cloth, handbags, bullfight photographs, toy monkeys and perfume. There were very few cars and those made their way slowly between the crowds who walked in the centre of the narrow street. American and British sailors jostled small, swarthy men in pastel-shaded suits. The women watched from the tiny balconies with latticed and fretted windows on the first floor.

As the sun went down in rose and scarlet and finally indigo far out in the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the noise in Main Street swelled. The music from the bars grew louder and the swing doors belched out a stream of sailors who tumbled into the street, picked themselves up and tottered to the bar next door. The tinkling of broken glass attracted a patrol from the other side of the street and they went into the bar to quell the first fight. Their entrance was the cue for redoubled shouts from inside and higher and more frenzied notes on the trumpet while the castanets carried on their steady ticking without a break in their rhythm. The Gibraltar evening was warming up according to its traditional schedule.

The cadets ate prawn cocktails, swordfish steaks and pineapple fruit salad and afterwards drank beer quietly in bars where girls of fourteen or fifteen in flaring skirts danced the paso doble with dark youths in tight-fitting trousers and short black jackets.

‘Come on, George. Don’t be a
Paddy
!’

The name struck a chord of memory. George Dewberry straightened up.

‘Lord no!’ he snorted indignantly. ‘Don’ wanna be a Paddy. Ya know what h-happens to Paddys!’

‘Come on then.’

George Dewberry reluctantly followed the others outside. He had been enjoying the heat and the taste of the beer in his throat and the dizzy dancing of the women.

They changed their money into pesetas at the end of Main Street and took a taxi to the border. They walked across into Spain, where the frontier guards took no more notice of them than if they had been Spanish flies, although they looked concerned when George Dewberry lurched towards a bullfight poster.