We Joined The Navy (22 page)

Paul broke into a run. He passed Michael and Tom Bowles who were going through the motions of scrubbing a piece of deck. They had been bored with it since they started it. They welcomed Paul as a distraction.

‘What’s up Paul?’ asked Michael. ‘This your morning constitutional?’

‘Have you seen the Commander, Mike?’

Michael and Tom paused. This was better than they had hoped for.

‘Have you lost him?’

‘Yes. He was here a moment ago and now he’s just bloody well vanished.’

‘Goo-er,’ said Tom Bowles. He looked at Paul sympathetically. A doggie who had lost his master was a pathetic sight at any time. A doggie who had lost this particular master was in a perilous state.

‘Tell you what! Pipe for him to report to you on the quarterdeck!’

‘Don’t try and be funny, Tom,’ said Paul desperately. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

‘Have you tried the cable deck?’ Michael suggested. ‘He sometimes goes up there to nauseate the foc’sle men.’

‘Thanks, Mike.’

Paul looked on the cable deck and all along the upper deck and in the likely places, the bridge, the wardroom, and the Commander’s cabin. Then he looked in the less likely places, the cable locker, the sailmaker’s store, the saluting gun deck, the ship’s police office, and the shipwright’s shop. Finally, he tried the most fantastic parts of the ship he could think of, the awning store, the cells, the engine room, the electrical maintenance workshop and the band instrument store. But the Commander had vanished completely.

Breakfast time came and went and just as Paul had given up the search and was sitting down to a late breakfast, the loudspeaker on the Cadets’ Messdeck came to life.

‘Cadet Vincent, report to the Commander’s cabin at the double!’

The Commander was waiting in his cabin.

‘Where in Hades have you been, you little worm?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve been looking for you, sir.’

‘Looking for me? Great heavens boy, you’re supposed to be my doggie so help me! What’s the use of having a doggie who spends his time looking for me? You follow me about for two minutes, yawning and stretching like something that’s just crawled out of the double bottoms and when I want you you’ve disappeared!’

‘I’m very sorry, sir.’

‘Fat lot of good that is. Now stand at the door and call out the names of anyone who wants to see me and what he wants to see me about.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

Paul took up a position near the door.

‘Outside! How the devil can you see anybody from there?’

‘Sorry, sir.’

Paul stood outside the cabin door. Within a minute he was back again.

‘Mate of the Upper Deck, sir. Paint for paint ship, sir.’

The Mate of the Upper Deck went in and came out again. Paul went in.

‘Captain of Royal Marines, sir. Boot money for the postman, sir.’

With a wink at Paul, the Captain of Royal Marines went in and came out again. Paul went in.

‘Communications Officer, sir. Times of watchkeepers’ cinema show, sir.’

‘Sorry I didn’t bring my card, James,’ said the Communications Officer to Paul, grinning.

‘Chief Petty Officer Marks, sir. Dartboard for Chief and Petty Officers’ Recreation Space, sir.’

‘Shipwright Officer, sir. New counter for Ship’s Company Bookstall, sir.’

‘Senior Engineer, sir. Compassionate case, sir’

‘Instructor Lieutenant Evans, sir. Ship’s rugby in Jamaica, sir.’

‘M.S.O. Messenger, sir. Signals, sir.’

The stream of callers was continuous. There was always another waiting when Paul came out and as they came and went Paul began to have an inkling of the amount of work the Commander did in a day; he also began to understand the Commander’s early morning tetchiness.

‘Master at Arms, sir. Requestmen and Defaulters, sir.’

Paul stood in an inconspicuous position in a corner of the Keyboard Flat for Requestmen and Defaulters and watched his master begin the daily process of answering requests and administering justice. He noticed the differences in the Commander’s manner when dealing with Requestmen and when dealing with Defaulters.

With Requestmen, the Commander was charming. He kept his most genial manner for them, whether their request was for compassionate leave or to discontinue shaving. He beamed, he prompted, occasionally he laughed out loud. His good humour was such that other officers attending the table had sometimes wondered whether Dickie had had unexpectedly good news, perhaps even an answer to the Yellow Peril. But with Defaulters the Commander’s manner changed, as though a steel shutter had dropped over his good humour. His eyes were bleak and cold and his voice clipped. His attitude was so menacing that the officers standing round the table were forced to conclude that they had been mistaken about the Yellow Peril. It had clearly gained the upper hand again. The Commander studied each charge sheet as though it were an ultimatum from Genghis Khan himself.

Paul’s stomach began to bother him. Deprived of its customary breakfast it made an audible protest.

After Requestmen and Defaulters, the Commander went back to his cabin, sat down at his desk, and took out a trayful of papers. Paul assumed his old position outside the door but the procession of callers had stopped. The Commander was no longer at home.

Paul shifted from one foot to the other. He counted the rivets in the bulkhead and carefully studied a notice describing the proper use and maintenance of a nearby fire extinguisher. He traced air the pipes in sight across the deckhead until they disappeared. He examined a crack in the paint work which closely resembled, from a certain angle, a profile of Pontius the Pilot.

‘Vincent!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We shall be streaming paravanes next week. How much do you know about paravanes?’

Paul hesitated.

‘Obviously nothing. Get out the Seamanship Manual and read it up.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

The Commander’s bookshelf was typical of the man himself. There was the Seamanship Manual, all three volumes, three life histories of Nelson, four or five books on naval history, a copy of Brasseys, the R.N. and R.M. Sports Handbook, Jane’s Fighting Ships, the Navy List, several back numbers of the
Naval Review
, and a miscellaneous bunch of files, standing orders and signal logs. There were no novels, no poetry, no books indicating any pastimes or interests outside the Navy. The books depressed Paul. The man was invulnerable.

Paul took down the Seamanship Manual and found the section on the streaming and recovery of paravanes. He had not expected to find it interesting reading and, after the first sentence, he saw that he was not mistaken.

The cabin was peaceful. The sea made a regular hushing beneath the open scuttle and the Commander’s pen scraped methodically over a page. Paul was thankful for the peace and hoped it would last until dinner time.

Paul’s stomach then began its revolutionary debate of protest. The argument was subdued at first, led by an obscure backbencher, and it sounded like the preliminary rumblings of an approaching summer storm.

The Commander looked up.

‘Vincent,’ he said, ‘I can’t stand this. Self-control is one of the foremost requirements of a naval officer. If there’s one thing that gets under my skin, it’s a doggie sitting in my cabin bubbling and rumbling like a blasted hookah! Take this signal log outside and find me a signal about a Stoker Foster whose wife is supposed to be having a baby prematurely. Don’t come back until you’ve found it.’

Paul took the signal log, leant it against the Keyboard Sentry’s desk and began to read.

The signal log was a mine of detailed information. Paul was amazed at the number and variety of signals in it. There were signals about ship’s movements and intentions; ratings taken to hospital, qualified for advancement, or absent over leave; R.P.C.s from one wardroom to another for drinks at lunch time and from one captain to another for dinner; demands for spare parts, fuel, water, and stores; information on officers’ and ratings’ rigs for sporting and social functions; and weather reports, reports on accidents and reports on examinations. The Signal Log was the complete daily conversation of ship, flotilla, squadron, fleet, depot and command, neatly recorded for months past, each signal with its date and time, addressee and priority, and it contained every kind of signal except one relating to the premature baby of the wife of Stoker Foster.

Paul laid down the Signal Log with a new sense of wonder and of humility that there had been so much happening, so much organisation, of which he had known nothing. He looked at his watch and saw that he had been reading signals, entranced, for over half an hour. He hurried back to tell the Commander that he could not find the signal.

But the Commander was not so easily satisfied.

‘I
know
that signal is on board somewhere. Look in the M.S.O. and Captain’s Office Logs. There must be a copy somewhere. Don’t come back until you’ve found it.’

The signal was not in the Captain’s Office nor in the M.S.O. and Paul asked the Yeoman of the Watch if he had any back numbers. The Yeoman brought down a pile of old files and logs.

‘There you are, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s all the signals we’ve got. If it’s not in there we haven’t sent it and we haven’t received it.’

Paul delved further and further back. He read signals relating to political crises long since resolved and forgotten, to machinery declared obsolete and removed, even to ships which had been broken up or sunk by the enemy years before. He found signals concerning every refit, recommissioning and full power trial the ship had ever had. Finally he came to a signal in which
Barsetshire’s
first Captain proudly informed the Admiralty that he had, on that day, commissioned the ship for the first time. Dinner time came, the Yeoman of the forenoon watch was relieved, and still Paul could not find the signal.

‘What you looking for?’ asked the Yeoman of the afternoon watch.

Paul told him.

‘Well, it’s no good looking in
that
lot. Any premature sprog in there’ll be on pension by now. Try the P.T. and Welfare Office. They’ve got a special log there for compassionate cases.’

The P.T. and Welfare Office was empty when Paul arrived but a large file lay on the desk.

Feeling as though he were approaching one of the books of the Sybil, Paul opened the file and straightaway plunged into one of the most appalling catalogues of human disasters ever collected under one cover. The Welfare File was a tale of catastrophes unsurpassed by any of Dante’s in the Inferno or of Poe’s in the realm of the supernatural.

He read of ratings whose families had vanished without trace, ratings who arrived on leave to find their families in the street, and of ratings who had discovered their houses infested with rats, cockroaches, mice and ants. Some had swarms of bees in the back room, others had lorries crashed into the front room. There were mothers electrocuted in the bath, grandmothers scalded by Lancashire hotpot, uncles who died of a surfeit of winkles, babies choked by rattles, fathers who fell into the coal-cellar and grandfathers who dropped dead whilst clearing snow off the front step.

Just as Paul was becoming absorbed in the Welfare File and was lighting his second cigarette, the P.T. and Welfare Officer himself came into the office.

‘Hello’ he said, ‘reading my “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”? What can I do for you?’

‘I was looking for a signal about a Stoker Foster, sir,’ Paul said. ‘His wife is having a premature baby.’

‘Oh, that one. It’s not in there. I sent the whole pack down to the Commander’s cabin before lunch.’

The loudspeaker outside the cabin door suddenly blared.

‘Cadet Vincent, report to the Commander’s cabin at the double!’

The Commander was waiting.

‘Where in Hades have you been, you little worm?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve still been looking for that signal, sir.’

‘You mean to tell me that you’ve been three hours looking for a signal?’

Paul’s stomach had long since given up its struggle for its constitutional rights and had lain in uneasy, mutinous but nevertheless silent quiescence. Now, however, in close proximity to the Commander once more, it began to stir itself for a fresh attempt. The Commander glared at Paul.

‘I will not tolerate a doggie who cannot control his digestive processes. Go away, go
right
away, and don’t come back until Evening Quarters. And in the meantime for pity’s sake get something to eat!’

In the days of sail, Evening Quarters had two functions, to exercise the Ship’s Company and to check their numbers for absentees. In
Barsetshire
only the first object was applicable, since the loss of a cadet overboard was hardly considered a sufficiently grave reason for stopping the ship and inconveniencing the entire Ship’s Company, and it was achieved by sending the seaboats away to pick up danbuoys, while the cadets who were not in the crews doubled round the upper deck to the music of the band until the boats came back.

When Paul followed the Commander up on to the quarterdeck, the divisions had already fallen in and the boat’s crews had been detailed. The day’s exercise was meant as a demonstration for the junior cadets and the boat’s crews were entirely composed of senior cadets. Looking over his own division’s boat, Paul saw that Tom Bowles was the coxswain and Michael was also in the crew as stroke and looking, Paul thought, scared.

Michael was scared. When he heard the seaboats piped away and saw the sea that was running, Michael had assumed that the pipe had been made by an inexperienced junior bosun’s mate only because he had seen it written on the routine. But when Michael noticed that the ship was slowing down and Tom Bowles told him he was in the crew Michael looked over the side, where massive waves were flinging their crests up at the waiting keels of the boats and sliding aside to leave dark abysses far below, and felt again that fear which had gripped him on the day Maconochie was drowned.

Watching Michael sitting in his lifejacket, bearing the boat off the ship’s side with the butt end of his oar, Paul sensed his fear and knew they were both thinking of Maconochie.