by John Winton
Some College activities were held after supper. One of them was the Dancing Class.
The Dancing Class was taught by the wife of a College master. Partners were provided by other masters’ wives, by the nursing sisters from the hospital and by various other ladies in the College whom The Bodger loftily referred to as ‘the camp-followers one gets in any great establishment.’
The dancing took place to the music of a gramophone. The College had a limited stock of records and cadets who went to the classes for any length of time became accustomed to them and to no others. The Dartmouth Dancing Class was thus responsible for the widely held belief amongst naval wives that naval officers can only dance to certain tunes and only then when they have had sufficient to drink.
None of the Beattys except Raymond Ball attended the Dancing Class. One or two of them tried, Michael among them, because they felt that dancing, however repugnant, was an accomplishment they should possess.
On the one occasion when Michael attended the Dancing Class he was ordered, on entering the room, to take up his position for what sounded to him to be The Promenade Whisk with Sideways Chassé. Michael turned and bolted and never returned. It seemed that the Dancing Class had been going on since the College was built. Michael had no doubt that at one time, possibly between the wars, the class had been learning simple steps. But they had now progressed into the realms of fantasy and there seemed no way of bringing them back.
Raymond Ball was the exception. He was an experienced chevalier of the chassé, a paladin of the palais, a hardened veteran of many campaigns, from the Lyceum to Hammersmith. He was probably the first cadet ever to have come to Dartmouth with a Gold Medal for Ballroom Dancing. He was a triton amongst the minnows at the College class and even the class teacher, who was holding perspiring cadets at arm’s length before Raymond Ball was born, had to admit herself outclassed.
But for most of the Beattys the time between supper and going to bed was the only time of the day which they could call their own and they preferred not to spend it in such cold-blooded pursuits as ballroom dancing. Evening was the time for reflection, for unbuckling the spirit after the exertions of the day. It was the only time when the Beattys could attempt to take stock of what was happening to them at Dartmouth.
‘What amazes me,’ Paul said in the chest flat one evening, ‘is the emphasis they put on trivial things. If you can climb a rope, you’re made. If you can tie bloody silly knots, you’ve got a great future in the service. What are they getting at? What’s it all leading up to? Do they want a lot of performing monkeys or what do they want?’
‘It’s almost like a continuation of school,’ said Michael. ‘But not quite. They seem to put a kind of pressure on you which school never did.’
‘They take it so seriously, too. This place must cost thousands to keep up. What’ve we got tomorrow?’
Michael consulted a timetable which he made out for each week. He was a methodical boy and wrote on his timetable his work and recreation for every hour of every day. The timetable was neatly ruled off and gave times to the nearest minute. Paul and the rest of the chest flat found it invaluable.
‘P.T. tomorrow. . . ’
‘Oh Lord.’
‘... Then The Bodger for Ship Organisation, Chipperd for Anchors and Cables, Chief G.I. for Parade Training. In the afternoon we’ve got the Schooly for navigation. In the Dogs we’ve got that match against the Officers and Masters. After supper the Bodger again on Leadership. Tomorrow’s also the day we’ve got to enter our marks for throwing the heaving line. . . .’
‘Enough, enough. ‘Tis not so deep as a well or so wide as a church door but ‘tis enough. ‘Twill serve. Will there be time for me to go to the heads sometime, do you think? Still, we must just take each day as it comes. Does the road wind uphill all the way?’
‘To the bitter end,’ said Michael, who was now used to Paul, and recognised his cue.
‘And shall we find other Beattys on the way?’
‘Day and night, my friend,’ said Michael.
A long low note on a bosun’s call sounded outside the window of the chest flat. It was the Night Rounds Party and Isaiah Nine Smith, the Chief Cadet of the Day, sounding the Still. The long low note ended and was succeeded by the voice of Mr Froud, chastising the author of the note. Clearly, the Still should be a long, high note.
Spink was standing rounds for the chest flat. He rehearsed his report, repeating it to himself over and over again.
‘Number one chest flat cleared for rounds, sir, nineteen cadets present, temperature fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Number one chest flat cleared for rounds, sir, nineteen cadets present, temperature fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit, sir.’
The Still, now wavering between high and low, came nearer and stopped outside. Spink braced himself. The Night Rounds Party, a small cavalcade led by Isaiah Nine Smith carrying a lighted lantern, followed by Mr Froud with the Chief G.I. bringing up the rear, came into the chest flat.
‘This lantern doth the horned moon present,’ murmured Paul, under the blankets.
Spink saluted.
‘Number one chest flat cleared for rounds, sir, fifty-five cadets present, temperature nineteen degrees Fahrenheit, sir.’
‘Oh blessed Bottom, thou art translated.’
Paul’s silent laughter stopped when Mr Froud stood at the foot of his bed.
‘All right, Vincent. Up to the surface.’
‘Sir?’
‘Were you bathroom sweeper tonight?’
‘Sir.’
‘Turn out and swab the deck again and square off the basins.’
‘Sir.’
The Night Rounds Party disappeared towards the other chest flats, their progress marked by the banshee wailing of Isaiah Nine Smith’s bosun’s call.
Paul turned out. Five minutes later he was back again.
‘See what I mean,’ he whispered to Michael as he climbed back into bed.
Their new life reacted on individual Beattys in markedly different ways. Those who had been first to preparatory and then to public schools found the transition easiest. They merely exchanged the petty tyrannies and traditional idiosyncrasies of their schools for those of the Navy. They were not mature enough to understand that the fads of a public school may be left behind with the school but those fads inculcated by the Navy could become lifetime habits. They did not feel the separation from their families keenly because they had been separated from their families for long periods before they joined the Navy. The lack of privacy did not trouble them because they had never known privacy except in the short holidays they had spent at home. Theirs was a simple transition from the semi-monastic existence of a public school to the semi-monastic existence of Dartmouth.
Michael and Paul were among this group. Michael in particular found the adjustment to Dartmouth easy as though, as he said, it were a continuation of school. The Bodger regarded Michael Hobbes as almost the norm of the Beattys. He was still diffident but eager to do well. He was intelligent enough to do all that was asked of him but not intelligent enough to enquire into motives. Properly led and carefully taught, he would make a servant who would serve the Navy faithfully and according to its demands upon him as long as he was able. Since he had been at Dartmouth The Bodger had developed the knack of picking out boys who were ideal subjects for training, as a salesman learns to pick out a genuine customer. Michael Hobbes was, in The Bodger’s opinion, a genuine customer.
Paul, on the other hand, adjusted himself to Dartmouth just as easily but was more critical of its motives. He appeared to the staff to be looking at the Navy with quizzical eyes. He was sure that he could make a success of it but he was not yet sure that it was worth making a success of. He was apparently suspending judgment on the Navy until it had proved to him that, behind the façade, it provided a satisfying fulfilment. He carried out his duties as well as any cadet in the term but The Bodger gained the impression that he was doing his best only through allegiance to himself and not yet th
rough any allegiance to the Navy. The boy was balanced on an edge. He could make the best type of officer of all, or he could grow embittered later, lose his ambitions and, because he was a forceful and persuasive character, cause others to lose theirs.
The cadets who had been to day schools, or to schools which do not give their pupils the same early experience of human foibles as the major public schools, found Dartmouth more difficult. Dartmouth seemed to these cadets a series of furious and seemingly pointless rushes from place to place. They were always one of a herd of milling bodies. They were always pestered. They were always late. Their lives had become a succession of sorties from one period of futile occupation to another, the whole mad stampede being carried out at the whim of a group of insane megalomaniacs in uniform.
Maconochie and Raymond Ball were typical. Maconochie had the further disadvantage that he suffered from illusions of personal grandeur. He had come into the Navy prepared to take it in his stride with his own charm and polished personality. Maconochie considered himself a finished product and found it impossible to accept the Navy’s view of him, as the rawest of raw material. Dartmouth took his self-assurance by storm, trapped him, and exposed the inexperience underneath. The process of destroying Maconochie’s egotism, which Paul had begun almost instinctively in the train on the way to Dartmouth, was completed by the Navy so quickly that Maconochie found himself struggling to maintain his place in the term after a few months.
Raymond Ball was superficially the same as Maconochie but he differed in one important aspect. Maconochie’s self-confidence was easily shattered; Raymond Ball’s never would be. The Bodger thought him very promising material for that reason. Raymond Ball’s allegiance was, like Paul’s, to himself but unlike Paul’s it would never be to anything else. Raymond Ball would make a successful naval officer until the time came for him to make a choice between the Navy and himself.
Tom Bowles was in a class quite by himself. Once in twenty years there arrives at a gymnasium a boy whom the trainers and managers recognise immediately as a natural fighter and a probable champion. Similarly at Dartmouth, in about the same period of time, a boy joins the Navy whom the training staff know is the one they have been looking for. Such a boy is the final goal of the interviewing board and the consummation of their hopes, the boy cut out, marked and destined for the highest rewards the Royal Navy offered.
One last and very small category of Beattys, headed by Dewberry and Spink, allowed nothing to trouble them. They plunged from place to place as they were directed but they neither hurried nor did they fuss. They had already decided that joining the Navy had been a ghastly mistake and nothing now could make it any more so. The Bodger worried about these cadets but saw no solution except to ease them out of the Navy as soon as possible.
4
‘Some time next week you are all going to spend a day in an aircraft carrier. Those of you who want to be pilots, and there are bound to be some, I suppose, will have a chance to see the kind of thing a Fleet Air Arm pilot does. Those of you who don’t want to be pilots will see what you’re escaping. Now I’m not going to try to influence you one way or the other about flying. It’s quite immaterial to me how you end your miserable existences but speaking as a small ship man myself, I personally want to see my grandchildren running round my knees and piping in childish treble voices: “What did you do during the war, Grandaddy?” and I shall say: “Say thank you now to Grandaddy for not being a pilot during the war else you wouldn’t be here to ask that”.’
The Bodger paused and regarded his audience. The Beattys stared back solemnly. It was impossible to tell from their expressions whether they were contemplating the life of an aviator or merely imagining one of The Bodger’s grandchildren.
‘Whether you like the idea of flying or not,’ continued The Bodger, ‘there isn’t one of you here who won’t be directly concerned with the Fleet Air Arm some time during your service career. Some of you will actually be pilots or observers. Some of you will serve on air stations. Most of you will go to carriers when you go to sea. You will all be concerned in some way. Flying now is the main armament of the Navy. It’s here to stay in a big way and you’d better get used to it.’
The Bodger need not have used such emphasis. He was addressing members of a generation who had never known a world without aircraft, to whom the most refined techniques of aerial warfare, up to and including the nuclear bomb, were commonplace. They had been in their cradles when Kingsford-Smith flew the Pacific and Byrd flew over the South Pole, toddlers when Amy Johnson reached Australia, and they were starting kindergarten when the Luftwaffe were trying their wings over Spain. They had been the first generation in the history of the world to look out of a class-room window on a summer afternoon and see a fleet of heavy bombers in the sky. Their lessons were learnt to the running undertone, like distant gunfire, of the great deeds of Taranto, Ark Royal, the hunt for the Bismarck, the bursting of the dams, Midway and the Battle of the Coral Sea. They had collected pieces of shrapnel and the tailfins of incendiary bombs as assiduously as they had earlier collected sea-shells and pebbles and they had all wanted to be pilots when they grew up with as fierce a desire as they had previously wanted to be engine-drivers. The techniques of survival had become as familiar to them as the school time-table. They marched by classes down to the shelters, in dressing-gowns and carrying their cocoa-cups, as unconcernedly as though they were filing into morning prayers. They enjoyed air raids and a boy who was fortunate enough to have his home bombed became a school celebrity and was pointed out as such to visiting parents.
Although the Beattys had forgotten details, traces of their knowledge, like the last instinctive remnants of an ancient lore, still remained and taken as an average the Beattys knew more about aircraft than The Bodger--a small ship man on his own admission--knew himself.
The question of whether or not to be a pilot caused sharp differences of opinion amongst the Beattys. Although The Bodger’s speech could hardly qualify as a recruiting talk, it reminded the Beattys that sooner or later in the Navy they would be called upon to choose the particular specialisation, within their present branch, in which they wished to serve.
Tom Bowles was the leader of the faction who wanted to be pilots. He was supported by Isaiah Nine Smith.
‘What attracts you so much about it, Tom?’ asked Michael.
‘I don’t know. It’s exciting, and it needs a lot of skill. It gives you a chance to be independent and act on your own a bit. I just know I want to do it.’
‘You get paid more, too,’ said Isaiah Nine Smith.
‘Judging by what The Bodger said, I imagine they pay you more because they don’t have to pay you for so long,’ said Paul.
‘Oh, go and get knotted,’ said Tom.
The aircraft carrier anchored off Dartmouth in the early morning and the cadets were taken off to her by drifter. They were met on board by midshipmen who split the Beattys up into parties of ten and guided them up to the island to watch the flight deck being prepared for flying.
The midshipman looking after Paul and Michael was more friendly than they had expected. He was an ex-Beatty himself.
‘I’m Tim Castlewood,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to show you characters what gives in this mighty vessel. How’s Beatty these days? Is old Froud still spitting fire and brimstone?’
‘He is,’ said Paul.
‘He’s O.K. when you get to know him. You should hear him singing “The Harlot of Jerusalem”.’
Paul tried to imagine Mr Froud singing ‘The Harlot of Jerusalem,’ but his imagination jibbed. It was easier to imagine the Loch Ness Monster singing ‘Annie Laurie.’
Tim Castlewood led the way out on to a narrow platform jutting out from the island. He took off his cap.
‘Off caps, fellows. No caps allowed while flying is in progress.’
‘What’s the idea of that?’ asked Maconochie.
‘It might blow off and get in a pilot’s way or get caught in something. It’
s safer to take them off and hold them in your hands while you’re goofing.’
‘Goofing?’
‘Watching the flying. Anyone who watches the flying is known as a goofer. Where you’re standing now is a goofing position.’
Down below, the flight deck was being made ready for flying. Men in coloured flight deck helmets were handling aircraft off the lifts and on to the flight deck. Small red trucks drove in and out, towing aircraft to be ranged aft where more men stood waiting with chocks. Other parties were preparing the catapult loaders, laying out bridles and hold-backs, trundling starting trolleys and tail-wheel forks, and unreeling fuelling hoses. Two men in heavy white suits and steel helmets with axes thrust in their belts stood by the large flight deck mobile crane at the after end of the island. The work was directed by unintelligible barks over the flight deck broadcast.
The aircraft were ranged in two lines down each side of the after end of the flight deck. The pilots walked out from a door in the island, carrying their helmets in their hands, and manned their aircraft. A pilot’s mate in overalls leant over each cockpit and strapped the pilot in.
The carrier had increased speed and turned into the wind. The wind buffeted the island with increasing strength. The ship’s wake curved in a long crescent of eddies fringed on its outside edge by small tumbling waves.
‘We’ve got to turn into the wind,’ said Tim Castlewood. ‘We need about thirty knots over the deck. There’s quite a lot of wind today. Sometimes we boil up and down the Channel for a whole day looking for wind.’
The flight deck was silent and ready. Everything now depended upon the wind. A meteorological rating stood by the catapults with an anemometer and signalled the wind speed to the bridge.
‘When Flyco gives them the tip they’ll taxi up one by one to the catapults and be boosted off. The catapults are those two tracks you can see running up to the forrard end of the flight deck.’ Tim Castlewood was watching the wind speed signals. ‘That’s it. They’ll start up any minute now. Of course, you’ve got to remember that we’re in no hurry today. If this was an operational strike this would all be done much faster.’
