by James Barlow
He went through the workshop, which was old, reminiscent of a nineteenth-century institution: worn benches, vices, spare valves and cocks. Air from a protruding square-sectioned duct blew his hair about, giving momentary relief.
Farther down he came into the confused area of boilers, pipes, gauges, valves, piping and auxiliary equipment where the sixty men of the engine rooms worked. They worked in three shifts, or watches, so that twenty men were on duty all the time, ten on the portside fire room and turbines and ten on the starboard. In the port engine room everything looked filthy and old, much of it coated with thick asbestos which was cracked and beginning to break. The safety rails were chest high and meaningless, for a man could roll under them without arching his body much: a heavy sea could throw him under the rail. Not that he would do more than crack his head or break an arm, for all the moving parts were encased.
It was Dimitrios’ job to watch the pressure gauges in the port boiler room, but he also kept an eye on dials and gauges which were positioned on the bulkhead between the two engine rooms (for one was behind the other). The Areopagus was so old she had been designed before naval architects and engineers had become neat and tidy. Ergonomics was a word not then invented. Ships designed today – warships, tankers, cargo ships, passenger liners, even vehicle ferries – have the bridge and engineering gauges and instruments arranged with logic and neatness. As on the automobile fascia the number of instruments has increased, and the speed of the eye and the human mind is considered. Much thought is given as to whether the dials on the consoles should be white with black numbering, or vice versa, and consideration is applied as to the possible tedium of reflective surfaces of the material into which the dials are set. But on the Areopagus it was as if instruments were resented altogether, and a variety of boxes and brass plates with ratchets and pointers were stuck all over the bulkhead where the duty officer or chief engineer stood. The telephone to the bridge was placed inconveniently and had no soundproofing, indeed no enclosed box at all.
The chief engineer was now standing on this ‘flat’ platform. He was a thickset man with cunning eyes and pale skin the texture of a lizard’s. He was the only person who ever kept reasonably clean down here, dressed in the white boiler suits the engineering officers wore. He looked at Dimitrios with slight surprise, aware that the boy had come on duty twenty minutes early. Perhaps he would make a generous note about it in the engine-room register. Dimitrios’ eyes read the instruments which concerned or interested him: auxiliary steam 250, steering gear 210, returning water 120 degrees.
After a while the bridge rang down and the chief engineer watched as Dimitrios took the telegraph through the test required. A quarter of an hour later the ship’s siren blew and a quarter after that the bridge telegraphed Dead Slow Astern, which meant a mere twenty-five revolutions of the propellers a minute. There was no sensation of movement or direction, not even when, the pilot dropped, speed was increased from the manoeuvring revolutions of Half Speed (forward) which was forty-five, to the full one hundred thirty or so revolutions of each propeller and the Areopagus began to pick up speed to about seventeen knots. There was an instrument which recorded these revolutions and it flicked around at the digit end like the trip recorder in a car. It was reading 89,937 now and ticked away as Dimitrios looked.
He stood there in the enormous heat with the air already foul and thought sadly of his position in the world. He was lonely and diseased. He had taken the enormous trouble to learn English so that he could emigrate from the poverty of Greece to the wealth of Australia. But they would not be likely to allow him into the country if he was diseased, and he did not quite have the courage to go ahead anyway. He was committed to this strange life among boilers and turbines, to the sweat rolling down his neck and chest, and to this old ship which he loved just a little. He belonged here. . . .
Chapter Three
The truck came along George Street too quickly and turned badly into the dock so that its rear tires screeched and skidded sideways. The truck was loaded with low-pressure tanks. One fell off and fractured its valve.
Gas hissed from the opening. A Greek sailor came out of a sweet shop, smoking a cigarette. The gas exploded and fire roared.
The truck had moved five hundred feet by now and its driver didn’t even know what had happened.
The area was not crowded, but there were a few screams. Very slowly, as it seemed, the fire was put out. There was a certain amount of comedy as water was used, in vain.
A taxi came to a stop and a man of about thirty-three paid its driver. He looked around and said in an accent partly Australian, but most of it Irish, ‘Jesus! The Black and Tans have been here!’
But he went quickly across to the sailor who was lying unconscious in a small pool of blood.
‘What happened?’ the man said.
There were now plenty of people willing to tell him, but he didn’t listen once he knew what had knocked the sailor down.
‘I’m a doctor,’ he told the people standing around. ‘Get a stretcher. We’ll take him on board.’
Someone suggested, ‘An ambulance?’ but the doctor said impatiently, ‘They’ll be all blasted day and rattle him to death anyway.’ Which was a little unfair to the city of Sydney . . .
The sailor’s pulse was rapid, but weak and thin.
It was typical of the doctor’s strong personality that he found two men and a stretcher at once, and he hurried ahead of them to the Areopagus.
The usual poor soul in white coat tried to stop him, but the doctor swept him aside. ‘Out of the way, Thucydides, we have problems.’ And then, to an officer, ‘Where’s the surgery?’ and the officer, too, surrendered to the personality before noticing the stretcher. ‘A Deck forward,’ he told him. The doctor shouted this information to the two middle-aged volunteers who were sweating and staggering with the stretcher. The sailor was now groaning.
There was a Greek doctor in uniform in the surgery. He was sitting on a cart drinking coffee. With him was a Greek sister, a woman of about thirty with a sad, sympathetic ochre face.
The uniformed doctor stood up at the interruption and asked in English, ‘Who the devil are you?’
‘I’m the new boy,’ the doctor told him. ‘Dempsey. Daniel Dempsey. We’ve got a poor bastard crew member here –’
‘The time for crew examination is from eight until nine –’
The Greek doctor was picking his teeth with a match stick. He produced a silver cigarette case.
‘Not this one,’ asserted Dempsey. He had a voice which was very incisive and a little loud even when, as now, he did not raise it in impatience. Jesus, he thought. He’s going to light a cigarette in his surgery! I hope the blasted place blows up. ‘This one is hurt.’
‘He was hurt on board?’ inquired the uniformed doctor conversationally.
‘No. On the dockside.’
‘Ah, good. He’s not our pigeon. Has someone sent for an ambulance?’
Dr Dempsey said with bite: ‘I’d heard this was a lousy ship and that the last Australian doctor walked off in disgust. When I was on the Opalescent a few years ago –’
They were to become very fed up hearing about the merits of the British ship Opalescent . . .
‘There is nothing the matter with this ship or the surgery,’ shouted the Greek doctor, red in the face. ‘You will see this when you look around.’
The sister was now weeping soundlessly.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Dempsey caustically.
‘She is tired.’
‘Overwork or too much dancing?’
‘I am in charge here,’ shouted the Greek, now furious.
The men with the stretcher kicked the surgery door open and stood, sweating and puffing, in the small area which was the waiting room.
‘Where d’you want him, mate?’ one a
sked.
Dempsey said to the Greek doctor, taking advantage of this arrival, ‘Can we discuss your importance later? Let’s help this poor bastard.’
‘Of course,’ agreed the uniformed officer coldly. ‘We will all pay attention while you demonstrate your professional skill and shout and curse.’
It was a bad start. Furthermore, the sailor had a ruptured spleen and torn guts. He was treated for shock and injected with morphine and antibiotics to stop infection, but had to be taken ashore two hours later to be operated on.
Dempsey was given a cabin on the starboard side near the surgery. He unpacked his suitcases and remained unpenitent, right on his side. He was usually right and forthright with it, annoying people as quickly as, socially, he amused or shocked them. He was a bachelor who admired women and who was liked by them because he was cheerful, confident, talkative and slightly outrageous – but ‘safe’. He was prone to making risky or blood-curdling revelations, usually at mealtimes, and was fascinated by gossip. But women could identify him better than he knew, and were aware that he was not lecherous, that he was a very straight sort of man; indeed, when alone with just one woman, he was noticeably less effervescent, being essentially a man who was a good talker at parties. He argued fiercely against Catholicism, but anyone could soon see that he belonged to it and to Ireland which he had left ten years before.
He had been walking down Leadenhall Street in London eight years ago and on impulse had stepped inside one of the palatial buildings which front for the passenger shipping companies. ‘I’d like to be a ship’s doctor,’ he’d volunteered.
Dempsey had all the qualifications and obtained the references required. Weeks later he’d received a letter asking him if he preferred to serve on the African or Asian run. He had thought vaguely of emigrating to Australia beforehand and promptly selected Asia. Two weeks later he had reported to the Opalescent at Tilbury.
He had a practice in Sydney and had become an Australian citizen. He’d only made three trips on the Opalescent, but remembered them with pleasure. Recently circumstances had allowed him to consider travel for a few months and a friend in the Health Authority had told him that the Areopagus had had problems and a doctor had walked off – probably to avoid being dismissed by the company.
He took the evening surgery with the Greek officer, who was distinctly cool. The sister looked at Dempsey now and again – and he felt she was a fraction converted by his humorous approach to passengers. He did nothing about which the Greek officer, who was first surgeon, could complain.
Dempsey ranked as second surgeon. He knew from experience aboard the Opalescent that as second officer he would be expected to behave, and drink, like a second officer of the bridge or engine room. On the Opalescent that had been embarrassing, for the officers had been much older men who drank heavily at parties in their cabins. Gin and whiskey had been very cheap on board. Dempsey recalled a party which had included a cricket team on its way to Australia. He had ended that voyage owing the company two shillings and threepence! But now he was eight years older, with very much more money in the bank, and with the aggressive confidence of experience; and he suspected that Greek ships and Greek officers would be different, socially, from the British.
After duty surgeries and cabin calls he was free to wander the ship, only having to tell the telephone operator where he would be. There were at present only two people in the ship’s hospital, both sailors whom the Green officer attended. The senior doctor would probably be the one who attended to the requirements and endless documentation of port authorities. Dempsey recalled visiting Japan with the Opalescent, the Japanese authorities had required a mountain of documentation, but after drinking a hell of a lot of gin he had left the forms behind . . .
Two days later he trailed around with the captain, the staff captain and the chief purser, who were all Greeks and walked somehow as if Dempsey wasn’t there. This did not in the least daunt him.
The crew were fully aware of the impending inspection and prepared for it. The stewards and cooks, bakers and storemen, messmen, apprentices and pastry cooks all looked to be cheerfully villainous small dark men. None appeared to have used a new razor blade for some time.
In the kitchen Dempsey said conversationally, to no one in particular, ‘Don’t you have detergent dispensers and rinse-line injectors for the dishwashers? On the Opalescent we had power sprays which scraped and rinsed. I mean, what’s the good of these blasted things’ – he referred to old dishwashing machines – ‘if dirty little hands then pick things up?’
The captain turned to examine Dempsey as if he’d just noticed him for the first time and found him an object of doubtful taste.
The staff captain – a formidable man with a hawk face, who thrived on trouble – also looked, but said nothing.
It was left to the chief steward to object mildly, ‘The ship was built and equipped a little earlier than the Opalescent.’
A few minutes later Dempsey commented, ‘Is this all the refrigerator space? God Almighty! No wonder you’ve had dysentery aboard! On the Opalescent we had cubic miles of rigid foam for insulating the provision rooms and cold chambers.’
Again the chief steward countered any implication. ‘This is a much smaller ship.’
Dempsey picked up an egg. ‘Jesus! It’s got a British lion stamped on it! They all have,’ he said in astonishment. ‘Do you mean to tell me you’re still using British eggs taken on board seven weeks ago?’
Captain Vafiadis said coldly, very slowly, as if translating with difficulty, ‘Do you suggest we throw away two or three thousand eggs, Doctor?’
‘Do what you like with them,’ countered Dempsey cheerfully, ‘only don’t serve me with any!’
‘I do not think anyone has been served with a bad egg on the Areopagus these last eight years,’ said Captain Vafiadis, and the chief steward, who was standing there waiting to be commended, agreed without a qualm, ‘That is quite true.’
Dempsey decided to shut up for the day.
He took the surgery that evening. The Greek doctor had a habit of disappearing, and Dempsey refused to complain.
The Greek sister stood around, vaguely apprehensive, and translated when required. She handed out suppositories and antibiotics and pills to cure constipation.
A Greek mother, who was well advanced in her next pregnancy, was the last of ten patients. She had brought along a small child of about two. The child had a bad cough, acute bronchitis, and Dempsey was not happy about her.
He prescribed antibiotics and said to the sister, ‘Tell her the child must have the medicine and she must stay in bed. She is pretty poorly.’
The sister translated for him and answered the few questions of the mother.
Two days later Dempsey, doing cabin calls, decided to visit this patient. He expected to find the little girl much better.
She was lying in a crowded cabin and she was dying of pneumonia.
Dempsey was shaken.
The cabin was hot and it smelled of clothes and herbs and urine.
He asked, ‘Does anyone speak English?’
They found a girl of sixteen, who listened to a babble of advice and then said to Dempsey, ‘We tried to give her the medicine but she didn’t want it. She is a good little girl, very quiet. Is she better now?’
He instructed the girl: ‘Tell them the child is dangerously ill and I must take her at once to the ship’s hospital.’
The girl’s face whitened in shock and her eyes moistened. When she translated there were tears and shouts, arms waved and faces were thrust before his, anxious peasant faces, already marked heavily with the burdens of life.
Dempsey wrapped the child up and hurried with her to the hospital, a trail of wailing relations behind him.
The sister was in the surgery, and two nurses, who promptly disappeared.
/> Dempsey put the child in a hospital bed and searched through the drug store. It was in a state of chaos. The surgeon who had left the ship had ordered what he’d felt would be required, but had made little allowance for the thousand migrants.
‘Aren’t you bastards answerable to anyone at all?’ Dempsey roared in great anxiety.
The sister said stonily, ‘No one has died, have they?’
‘This one will.’
‘What are you looking for?’
He told her.
‘We don’t have any,’ she said, and then, in explanation, ‘This is a Greek ship, not American.’
‘I don’t give a damn what it is. If they can order thirty thousand eggs and let three thousand go stale –’
She asked bitterly, ‘What are you shouting about? We are fully trained, too. Dr. Zafiropoulos and myself as well as you Australians.’
‘Dublin,’ he corrected.
‘What?’
‘I was trained in Dublin.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘What do you mean, here I am?’
She smiled and ventured cautiously: ‘We’re both on a ship with a Panamanian flag. What does it matter where we’ve trained.’
‘Christ, women are evasive!’ he bellowed, but with good humour. ‘I wasn’t talking about your capabilities but the shortage of drugs.’
‘Are you expecting an epidemic?’ she asked quietly.
‘When I was on the Opalescent –‘
‘Oh, no!’ the sister protested. ‘I couldn’t bear such a perfect ship!’
‘Come and have drink when we’ve settled this kid?’
‘Me? A dirty Greek incompetent? With you? Am I worthy? Are my fingernails and feet clean enough?’
