We Joined The Navy (28 page)

At least once a cruise
Barsetshire
anchored in a remote part of the coast where every boat was lowered, filled to the gunwhale with food and drink, manned by everyone who could get away, and sailed as far from the ship as possible. Banyans were popular with the whole Ship’s Company except the Navigating Officer and Owen Glendower. The Captain’s red setter could protest by being sick on the Captain’s carpet and disappearing two minutes before the boat left, and having the duty watch of cadets called out to look for him, but the Navigating Officer had no choice but at attend banyans. He attended banyans for political reasons, because the Commander made himself unpleasant towards any of the ship’s officers who did not participate in cadets’ activities; the Commander looked upon such officers as Nero looked upon any of his courtiers who did not openly enjoy the efforts of Christians in the arena to escape from the lions.

The Navigating Officer was a man who loved his creature comforts. He contemplated a night spent under a lone star with the same horror as he would have contemplated one spent under a cold shower. Normally the Navigating Officer’s life was orderly, comfortable, and as predictable as the course of the stars. He had trained his steward to make his tea, press his suits, and clean his shoes in exactly the manner he preferred. He had a chart pinned to the door of his wardrobe which laid down in detail the combinations of clothes which he customarily wore. Before going to bed at night or going ashore in the evening, the Navigating Officer turned the chart so that a number appeared in a little slot. Number One, for example, was the Navigating Officer’s rig for Sunday divisions, weddings and Admiral’s inspections and it consisted of his best uniform, best cap, black satin tie, and his sword and medals. Number Five was his double-breasted grey suit, white poplin shirt, Old Carthusian tie, light tan socks and brown brogues; Number Twelve was white tennis shorts, white shirt, naval blazer with the silver crown embroidered upon the pocket (not the Charterhouse 1st XI blazer which was included in Ensemble Number Fifteen), white shoes and socks, and Incogniti silk square. By a system of crosses and secondary numbers, the Navigating Officer had provided in his clothing chart for every sartorial occasion or emergency. He had rigs for funerals, point-to-points, hunt balls, abandoning ship, Highland games, underwater fishing, and for watching drop-forges. The Navigating Officer’s Clothing Chart was, in the opinion of his steward, better than a novel. Number Thirteen on the List was marked with a red circle and the Navigating Officer’s steward had learned to dread it. It was the Navigating Officer’s Banyan Rig.

His bitterness was made overflowing because he was normally called upon to choose the ship’s anchorage for banyans.

‘Have a look at the map, Pilot,’ the Captain said when the ship left Barbados, ‘and see if you can’t find us a spot in the Virgins where we can all get away from civilisation for a bit.’

Looking like a man condemned by the Inquisition to choose a spot for his own
auto da fe
, the Navigating Officer directed the ship through an intricate and dazzlingly beautiful necklace of tiny islands, like drops of golden sand scattered upon the blue sea. They had names which conjured up memories of the glorious days of the Spanish Main; Dead Man’s Chest and Fallen Jerusalem and Virgin Gorda. The Navigating Officer anchored the ship in gleaming blue water in the midst of a small group of islands which were green with palms and bordered with blindingly white sand, looking as though they had never been visited since Blackbeard himself called there to maroon mutineers.

The Ship’s Company looked about them, sniffed the air, and agreed that the Navigating Officer had done a good job.

The Captain clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Well done, Pilot!’ he said.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the Navigating Officer. He went and sat down in the Charthouse, looking like a man congratulated by Torquemada upon his choice of faggots.

The Bodger, on the other hand, loved banyans. It was a stroke of luck for him that Pontius the Pilot was on duty over the week-end and asked The Bodger to take his place in charge of his division’s banyan. The Bodger superintended every stage of the banyan’s preparation and execution. It was The Bodger who ordered the drinks and the food, selected the boat, detailed the crew, and took the tiller.

The boat was loaded with three crates of beer, some rum, potatoes, eggs, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, loaves of bread, a kettle, a saucepan, several pots, a barricoe of water, tins of soup, some hammocks, fifteen cadets, Ginger, Evans the Slide Rule, the Navigating Officer, and The Bodger.

The Navigating Officer sat in the stern sheets. He wore lightweight fawn slacks, a pale yellow silk shirt with a tea-rose embroidered on the pocket, straw espadrillas, and on his head a tiny black skullcap with a design of pine trees and the word ‘St Moritz’ worked on it in green silk. In his right hand he carried a portable radio and in his left his private First Aid Box; carefully placed by his feet were his custom-made sleeping bag and his picnic hamper from Fortnum and Mason’s. It was the Navigating Officer’s Banyan Rig.

The rest of the crew wore football shirts and shorts, except The Bodger, who wore blue and white checked jeans, a red shirt and a Paisley scarf.

There was a delay at the gangway while the Navigating Officer sent up for the yellow cushion, filled with Merino flock, which lay on his desk-chair, not, the Navigating Officer emphasised, the blue cushion embroidered with the Rape of Lucrece which was on the stool by the door. The Bodger grew impatient.

‘Come on, Pilot,’ he said. ‘There won’t be any photographers there.’

‘I know,’ the Navigating Officer said gloomily, ‘but there will be stones. And insects.’

The Bodger could wait no longer.

‘Let go, bear off. Let go aft. Let’s get out of this, men.’

The boat sheered easily away from the ship, caught the wind, and bobbed under nicely filled sails towards the shore.

‘Feeling better now, Pilot?’

The Navigating Officer said nothing. He was mentally estimating the hours which must elapse before he returned to the ship, a hot bath, and his creature comforts. If they ran out of food and liquor, the Navigating Officer calculated, they might just be back in time for dinner. That made twenty-nine hours.

The cadets stretched out on the thwarts. Some of them tended the sheets for The Bodger, but most of them looked back at a sight of which they never tired,
Barsetshire
receding into the distance.

A wind off the sea took the boat in through the surf towards the beach. Fifty yards from the line of the sand, The Bodger swung the boat around in a wide reach.

‘Let go the anchor! Down foresail, brail up. Take that kedge ashore!’

The boat hung stern on to the shore by its anchor. Two cadets, already naked, leapt into the water with the kedge anchor and carried it up the beach where they embedded it in the sand. The boat was suspended between two anchors, bows on to wind and sea, twenty yards off the beach, in five feet of water. Tom Bowles was impressed. The Bodger had shown once again that he was much more competent at the mechanics of seamanship than he made out.

‘Well done, Bodger,’ said Ginger. ‘Captain Bligh himself couldn’t have done better.’

‘All out, men,’ said The Bodger. ‘I expect the bar to be open by the time I get ashore.’

The cadets ferried the equipment on their shoulders to the beach. The Navigating Officer watched closely; he had not forgotten last year’s banyan, when an Indian cadet had wantonly dropped his portable gramophone into the sea.

The Bodger took a last look round the boat and waded ashore, where Paul was waiting with a bottle of beer.

The Bodger took the bottle and poured a drop on to the sand.

‘First let us pour a libation to the gods,’ he said. ‘We’re now in the home of voodoo and it wouldn’t do to neglect the local witchdoctors. You may think that funny, Vincent, but a chum of mine was out here as Number One of a frigate some time ago. He told an old man on a beach to make himself scarce, dived into the water and broke his neck on a rock. And nobody could find that rock afterwards. So always drink the local wine and respect the local gods and you can’t go wrong.’

The Bodger finished his beer and looked about him.

‘Vincent and Hobbes, you can be in charge of the bar. Put all that liquor in the sea to keep it cool. Bowles, Dewberry, Ball and Cartwright start collecting firewood. Cleghorn, start a fire. Stacforth and Smith give Instructor-Lieutenant Evans a hand with the cooking. Spink, climb that tree and get some coconuts.’

Half an hour later, the cadets gathered round the fire for soup, eggs and bacon, buttered bread, tinned peaches, and a bottle of beer each. Just as they were about to drink, in the silence which fell as steaming mugs were raised to lips, a coconut fell into the fire and scattered sparks and half-burnt pieces of wood in a circle. They looked up.

A pale face peered down at them from the top of a palm-tree.

‘Good grief!’ said The Bodger. ‘It’s Spink!’

Spink had climbed the tree and got a coconut. While the bottles were being submerged in the sea, while a pile of driftwood enough to keep a beacon alight for a week was being gathered, while the food and hammocks were being laid out, and while Evans the Slide Rule and his assistants were cooking the meal, Spink had removed his shoes, edged upwards inch by inch along the smooth, shiny bark and, wrestling all the time on the brink of vertigo, he had grasped a coconut. Success had made him tremble and the coconut had fallen. He began to climb down.

‘Chuck down a few more while you’re up there Spink, there’s a good chap,’ called The Bodger.

Spink shook the tree. A coconut landed in the sand a foot away from the Navigating Officer. The Navigating Officer recoiled and another coconut thumped down where he had been sitting. More coconuts rained down, in and around the fire.

‘AH right, all right, Spink, old boy! That’s enough. Come down now.’

The party gazed up at Spink’s legs appearing beneath the clump of leaves at the top of the tree.

‘You can come down now Spink!’

‘I know, sir,’ a faint voice answered from the leaves, ‘but that’s the trouble. I can’t.’

The Bodger stood at the foot of the tree.

‘Just clasp the trunk with your legs and ...’

Spink landed on top of The Bodger in a halo of leaves and a flurry of sand.

After lunch, the cadets sunbathed on the beach and swam.

Tom Bowles lay down near George Dewberry.

‘Very peaceful sound the sea makes, doesn’t it?’ said George Dewberry drowsily. ‘No wonder people write music about it.’

‘George, you shouldn’t get drunk so much.’

‘God, talk about changing the subject! What’s got into you, Tom?’

‘It’s a miracle how Pontius or The Bodger haven’t caught you yet. They’ve only got to catch you once coming off shore like that and you’ll be measured for a bowler hat before you can turn round.’

‘So what. It’s my hobby. I enjoy it. Let’s face it, there’s not much else to do ashore, is there? Unless you can get all excited over museums and things, like Paul. We lead such a cramped and bloody awful existence. Let’s face it, there’s only one word for it. Bloody awful. It’s O.K. for characters like you, you enjoy it and you’re good at it, but for me it’s sheer hell. Always being chased about the place, made to do bloody silly things at bloody silly times of the day, not even any decent music to listen to ...”

‘There’s the Gramophone Club . . .’

‘The
Gramophone
Club!’

‘Well, the Padre does his best.’

‘I know, Beethoven’s odd-numbered symphonies, not including the Ninth, Grieg’s piano concerto, Rossini’s overtures, music from “Swan Lake” and the Hallelujah Chorus, that’s about all that man’s ever heard of. No Brahms because he’s too heavy, no Mozart because he’s too
superficial
, no Schumann because he went round the bend, no Prokofiev because he’s a Russian, no Gershwin because he’s too modern. What that man wants is some nice Germanic composer, born in wedlock, happily married, sane, who died just after Beethoven and composed nice sedate music with no discords or sudden changes of key, light enough so that you can hear it on the bandstand at Folkestone on Sunday afternoon but deep enough so that you can talk knowledgeably about its deeper meanings.’

Tom Bowles was startled by George Dewberry’s vehemence; it was the first time he had heard George Dewberry talk knowledgeably and enthusiastically about anything.

‘I’d no idea you felt so strongly about it George,’ he said. ‘Although I do feel you’re exaggerating a little.’

‘I don’t feel all that strongly about it and I am exaggerating, but I’m just saying it to show you that there are more things in heaven and earth than are considered in the Cadet Training Ship.’

Tom Bowles laughed. ‘I knew that, for heaven’s sake. But seriously, George, you want to watch these runs ashore of yours. You’ll soon be the youngest alcoholic in the Navy.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s fame in a way. Better to be notorious than unknown.’

‘That sounds like The Bodger speaking.’

‘It is.’

‘And anyway, when you had the chance to listen to some decent music you were asleep! You slept right through “Pagliacci.”‘

‘I wasn’t asleep. I’d rather listen than look at an opera, and besides, I don’t like looking at Italians. That tenor was awful. It needs a really big tenor to sing Canio. It was Caruso’s great part. That chap had the notes all right but he just didn’t look the man for the part. He didn’t
look
annoyed because somebody was playing about with his wife. He just looked mildly hurt as though someone was pinching his bottom. I’ll give you one thing, it was at least in Italian. I can never understand why people listen to operas in English. You never understand what’s going on anyway, so why not
not
understand what’s going on in the original Italian instead of not understanding what’s going on in some bastard English translation? Come on, let’s get some sleep. It’s the only reason I came on this trip.’

Tom Bowles turned over and lay face down on the sand. He had discovered, as the Interview Board had discovered before him, that there was more to George Dewberry than met the eye.