by John Winton
Mr Froud watched blankly. Seldom had he seen such an exhibition. He dug deep into his memory for a comparison.
‘Once, when I was a little boy,’ he said, ‘a circus came to our town. In that circus was a three-legged woman. My dad wouldn’t let me have a look at her and from that day to this I’ve wondered what she looked like. Now I know. Now I know what eighty-one three-legged old women look like! I wish my small daughter of three was here to see you lot. I really do. She’d laugh like a mad thing just looking at you.’
As the drill periods wore on, the Beattys concluded that Mr Fraud’s small daughter of three was something of an infant parade-ground prodigy, who not only knew the Naval Drill Book by heart, but had written it.
After a fortnight the Beattys felt that they had improved. But Mr Froud shook his head.
‘I don’t know who’s going to teach you. I can’t.’
‘How about your small daughter of three, Chief?’
The Beattys rested while Maconochie doubled twice round the parade-ground, once for blasphemy, which was calling a Cadet Gunner ‘Chief,’ and again for impertinence to a Cadet Gunner (a crime comparable only to defacing a statue of Nelson). However, Maconochie’s protest seemed to cheer the Beattys, for when they next halted Mr Froud admitted that he had once long ago seen a squad of Nigerian thermometer glass-blowers give a worse exhibition than the circus act with which the Beattys had just offended his tired old eyes. The Beattys felt that they could have received no higher praise.
‘But don’t run away with the idea that you’re any good. You’re not. But at least I’m not ashamed to be seen on the same parade-ground now.’
The sun shone for Divisions on the day of the Royal Visit. It was the social climax of the summer term and several hundred parents and friends were present. From their positions on the ramparts they looked down on a brave picture of lines of cadets in their best uniforms and white caps, and the sparkling gold lace and polished swords of their divisional officers. It was a picture of hope and enthusiasm and eagerness for life which thrilled the hearts and moved the tears of the watching parents, friends and masters and even of the newsreel cameramen who had been invited for the occasion.
Whilst the Parade waited for the Guard to appear, Mr Froud walked slowly behind the Beattys’ ranks giving advice in a low, growling stage whisper.
‘Don’t let me see any of you fainting like a shower of Fannys. Remember what I told you. If you’ve got to move something, wriggle your toes. Don’t move anything that shows, because I’m watching you. If you feel the sky beginning to close in on you, wriggle your toes. If you hear a buzzing in your ears, wriggle your toes. If your legs go all weak and you see everything going grey and hazy. . . .’
Soundlessly, George Dewberry toppled like a felled tree and lay prone at Mr Fraud’s feet.
‘ . . . just wriggle your toes and you’ll be all right!’
Mr Fraud passed along the ranks repeating his advice and smelling out the weaker members who, one by one, fainted; far better that they should faint now than later. He worked especially hard on the three small Sikhs but the Sikhs resisted. They wriggled their toes until their boots creaked, but they stayed upright.
The last Beattys had hardly regained their places after carrying one of their number, legs trailing, to the side, when the Guard appeared and the ceremony began.
The Guard halted opposite the flagstaff. The Colours were marched in slow time from the main doors of the College, down the steps and across the parade-ground to a place in the middle of the Guard.
When the Royal Visitors appeared on the parapet, the Guard presented arms, the band played the National Anthem, and the Colours dipped. Fathers removed their hats, mothers wiped their eyes, the cameras whirred and the cadets, their officers and the spectators were held together in a few moments of traditional pride and personal loyalty.
The Royal Visitors acknowledged the salute and descended to the parade-ground to begin the inspection. The parade relaxed. The divisions were stood at ease and the band played excerpts from the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The inspection took some time. When the inspecting party, heavy with medals and weighted with gold lace, at last reached the Beattys in the rear the band had long since exhausted its repertoire from ‘The Mikado,’ ‘The Gondoliers’ and ‘Trial by Jury’ and were playing excerpts from ‘Chu Chin Chow’ and--in a fit of unaccustomed and daring modernity on the part of the Bandmaster--a selection of tunes by Ivor Novello.
The most distinctive figure in the Beattys’ front rank was Mehibash, a tall bronzed Egyptian who stood as rigidly to attention as an obelisk. No inspecting party could pass such a figure by without a word and because Mehibash’s English was known to be rudimentary and to consist largely of profanities taught him by the Beattys, The Bodger was afraid that Mehibash might be at a loss for a suitable reply; it was a point which The Bodger had forgotten to arrange beforehand. But The Bodger had no need to worry. Paul had anticipated the question and had coached Mehibash in his answer.
‘How long have you been in England?’
Mehibash swivelled a golden-tawny eye downwards.
‘Too blahdy lawng, thang you verree moch!’ said Mehibash and grinned generously. He was obviously confident that he had upheld the reputation of the Pharaohs in this barbaric land whose inhabitants had been painting themselves blue and burning their prisoners in wicker cages whilst his ancestors had been building the Pyramids.
The College marched past, led by the Guard and the Colours, and afterwards went to church. The cadets filed into the College chapel in the same order as they had marched past the saluting base and wearing superficially the same expressions. The service was as much an evolution as a parade, as though it had been designed to give the maximum number of cadets the maximum amount of religion in the shortest time.
The visiting Bishop who conducted the service had once been told as a theological student that no sailor could be an atheist since he lived too close to one of God’s instruments, but a period in a Portsmouth parish and experience as a naval padre in two wars had made the Bishop sceptical. But now, as he looked over his huge congregation, the Bishop felt again that heart-warming quality which all naval services have, whether they are held in a church, or on the quarterdeck of a ship at sea. Used as he was to the empty churches and elderly congregations of his own diocese, the Bishop beamed at the youngest, most hopeful and certainly the largest congregation he had had for years.
The cadets too felt the exaltation of the moment. The words of the Naval Prayer gave them a vision of the line of ships and men which they and their future ships would continue. It was one of the few times while they were at Dartmouth, indeed while they were in the service, when they were permitted a glimpse of the final end of their labours.
After starting on a crest of such high exaltation, the day dropped into a trough of low comedy. The Day of the Royal Visit passed into the Night of George Dewberry’s Run Ashore.
Having avoided Mr Froud all day, George Dewberry dressed himself in his best uniform at supper time, presented himself to the Chief Cadet of the Day for inspection and proceeded ashore.
It was George Dewberry’s first, last, and only expedition outside the College. He went alone and this was in itself unusual, for the naval custom whereby officers proceed ashore in parties of not less than two, often a prudent custom abroad, is normally still observed at home, where the natives might have been supposed to be friendly. George Dewberry told nobody why he went ashore on that particular night or where he had been, but from the moment he stepped inside the Beatty barracks it was obvious what he had been doing. George Dewberry was splendidly, unashamedly, roaring drunk.
It was Michael who first heard the voice outside the chest flat window, and a sound of scuffling.
‘Goosh!’ roared the voice. ‘Goosh! Gorright! Clumsy fool! Whatcha think you’re doing, eh? He he! Goosh, hup! Goosh me.’
Michael looked out of the chest flat window and saw George Dewberr
y standing astride, calmly and with an air of satisfaction passing his water against the base of the Beattys’ flagstaff. Michael thought of The Bodger’s face in the morning and shook Paul.
‘What the hell’s the matter?’
Paul looked at his watch.
‘Good God, Mike, do you know what the time is?’
‘Quick Paul. George Dewberry’s tight.’
‘How tight?’
‘As a newt.’
‘Good for him.’
Paul turned over but Michael shook him again.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake!’
‘We can’t leave him there.’
‘Why not? Look, let me get some sleep, will you? Please?’
‘You’ve got to give me a hand to get him to bed. He might hurt himself.’
‘Hope he does.’
‘No, come on, Paul. We’ve got to get him to bed. There’ll be the most frightful nausea if The Bodger or old Froud or someone finds out.’
‘Oh all right.’
Paul got out of bed and they both looked through the window. George Dewberry was just finishing. Having finished, he stepped back, solemnly saluted, turned and saw his audience.
‘Hi fellows!’ he said cheerily and waved. ‘No s-satisfaction without urination y’know.’ His cheery look changed to one of bewilderment. When Michael and Paul reached him, he was staring about him with a puzzled air, as though he were searching for someone. Here is Dewberry, he appeared to be thinking, but where is Bohun, where are De Vere and Mowbray, nay, what is first and greatest of all, where is Plantagenet? They caught him as he fell and dragged him into the chest flat.
‘Vknow,’ he said, ‘I feel really good. I never felt as good as this before. Everythin’s goin’ to be O.K.!’
‘No wonder,’ said Paul. ‘You smell like a bloody brewery. What’ve you been drinking?’
‘Drinking?’
‘You’re as honked as an owl.’
‘Y-you may think I’m honked,’ George Dewberry said with a seraphic smile as they sat him on his bed, ‘but you should see the other blokes!’
Paul removed George Dewberry’s clothes, with no protest from him; indeed he co-operated, giggling, as though he were performing some form of party forfeit. When he was naked, George Dewberry sat up and examined his toes as though he had never seen them before.
‘Thish little piggy went to market--hup!’
‘Up,’ said Paul. He lifted George Dewberry on to his feet.
George Dewberry staggered along, willing to go wherever his benefactors cared to lead him. He was still reciting ‘This little piggy went to market’ when Paul turned on the cold shower.
The effect of the ice-cold water was immediate and appalling. George Dewberry brought his fist sharply down on the bridge of Michael’s nose and let out a roar of shocked, and sober, fury which would have brought the Seven Sleepers doubling out of their cave in Ephesus.
‘Shut up, you idiot!’ whispered Paul fiercely through gritted teeth as he fought to control George Dewberry who was plunging and kicking like a young buffalo in the springtime. ‘You’ll have Mr Froud in here!’
‘---Mr Froud!’ George Dewberry bellowed. ‘---Froud!’
He was struck by the alliteration.
‘---Froud,--Froud,---Froud,’ he carolled.
Paul and Michael were both knocked aghast by this blasphemy. The rest of the chest flat, all now wide awake, wondered whether it was worth while getting up to look at the iconoclast George Dewberry before he was struck down by heavenly wrath.
They were given no more time to decide. As if he had materialised in answer to George Dewberry’s frenzied incantations, Mr Froud appeared at the door of the bathroom and shone a torch round inside.
Dewberry was transfixed in the beam, goggling like a rabbit in the headlights. Aladdin rousing the Genie for the first time, Semele confronted by Jupiter in radiance, could never have been so taken aback and utterly confounded as was George Dewberry by the appearance of Mr Froud.
Mr Froud looked coolly at the figures in front of him, George Dewberry in the centre and Paul and Michael with his eyes streaming standing beside him like heraldic supporters, and was conscious that he had made a dramatic entrance.
‘Get him to bed,’ Mr Froud said quietly and vanished as suddenly as he had come.
Afterwards, when he was a watchkeeping lieutenant at sea, Michael realised that he had witnessed that night only one of the many techniques for carrying out an important part of a naval officer’s profession.
The theory and practice of dealing with drunks was considered so important that it received a special mention in The Bodger’s lectures.
‘It all boils down to one thing,’ said The Bodger. ‘Never, on any account, put yourself in such a position that they can strike you or insult you in any way. If you see a boat-load of drunks coming off, don’t stick your head over the guardrail and shout down to them or as sure as fate some witty Jolly Jack will answer you. Make the boat lie off. They can lie off all night if necessary. They’ll calm down when they see they’re not going to get on board until they’ve quietened down. When they do come on board, get away out of it and let the Royal Marine fisting party take charge of them. You’ll hear dozens of stories, though most of them are apocryphal, of Officers of the Watch being chased round and round the quarterdeck by intoxicated matelots armed with razors, knives, stilettos, bill-hooks or pickaxes, depending on the locality. The object of the chase is not, as you might well suppose, to provide the Quartermaster and the Bosun’s Mate with a source of innocent merriment nor is it to give exercise to the constipated and enervated officers of H.M. Ships. The idea is simply to prevent the man increasing the seriousness of the charge against him from one of drunkenness to one of striking an officer. Coming off shore drunk is classed as a regrettable but human failing. The chap loses one day’s pay. But striking an officer is another thing altogether. It used to be punishable by what was called flogging round the fleet, so many lashes at the gangway of each ship. Even now it carries the heaviest penalties in the Naval Discipline Act, formulated and instrumented by the Articles of War. The chap is placed under Close Arrest at once and will be damn lucky to escape a court martial. So be warned. If you see a drunk coming, don’t stand in front of him flaunting your gold lace or you’ll get thumped and rightly so. I can guarantee that if you’re ever Officer of the Watch and you get clobbered by a libertyman you’ll see the Commander the next morning as well and he’ll give you the biggest bollocking you ever had in your life for being such a bloody fool as to let him do it. Who decides when a man is drunk? Dewberry?’
‘The Medical Officer, sir.’
‘Wrong. The Officer of the Watch decides whether a man is capable of carrying out his duty. He can consult the Medical Officer if he thinks the man’s ill or the man claims to be drugged, but the Officer of the Watch, and the Officer of the Watch only, decides whether a man is drunk. So remember that. If you are the Officer of the Watch at the time then you will be the man the Commander will ask. Not the Medical Officer.’
The cadets who remembered The Bodger’s advice found it sound when the time came to test it. They found this was true of all The Bodger’s advice. The Bodger had been a midshipman when war broke out and in the following six years he had learned more than he could have done in twenty years of peace time service. His acute observation and wry sense of humour had built up a fund of anecdotes and epigrams which the Beattys understood and remembered more easily than text-book diagrams. The Bodger had no patience with books and had the greatest difficulty in imparting information through a set series of lectures. But once The Bodger began to reminisce the Beattys were allowed a glimpse of their future lives and problems.
The Bodger taught the Beattys how to run a wardroom wine account at a profit and not be court martialled for securing the mess funds; how to maintain a tailor’s bill so that the tailors never threatened through their solicitors, although the bill was never actually cleared; how to appear to be drinking dr
ink for drink with an official guest and remain sober; and how to play golf with Admirals and tennis with their daughters, without blighting their own careers or becoming engaged. The Bodger told the Beattys the classical opening conversational gambits for an official cocktail party in a foreign port; the proper facial expression and demeanour of an officer trying to reach a difficult decision in public watched by critical ratings; and the appropriate words of condolence, congratulation or enthusiasm when addressing a senior officer who has been passed over for promotion, become a father, or had an idea. The Bodger warned the Beattys of paper collars, of mixing the malt and the grape, of not drawing trumps, of backing ante-post, of marrying too early, and of drinking alone or when they had work to do. The Bodger gave freely of his own experience and the Beattys began to see him, not as a man disinterested in the service and in cadets, but as a man who had learned by bitter trial and error and who was interested in the cadets’ welfare and anxious that they should do well. The Bodger was perhaps the best sort of officer, one who served the Navy with no illusions but still with love.
The Beattys themselves were by now a recognised term of personalities instead of a list of names and an anonymous mass of faces. Although The Bodger was not a sporting man in any expert sense he knew the good effect on a divisional officer’s reputation of his term’s success at sport, and The Bodger realised that this present term of Beattys, although lazy, although unquestionably the worst term at drill in living memory, and although they had the longest defaulters’ list the College had known for twenty years, were exceptional at all games.
The progress of the summer term’s sporting events was a series of triumphs which provided The Bodger with a constant source of pride and gratification. There was the day when the Beattys beat the rest of the College by five runs. This was the match in which Paul opened the Beatty innings and carried his bat for an exquisite century. It was also the match in which the inimitable Maconochie, fielding very close to the bat, brought the Dartmouth innings to an end by catching the ball in his groin.
