We Joined The Navy

by John Winton

  George Dewberry was ordered ashore to visit a rum distillery, taking with him a croquet mallet, one of a set of six owned by the Navigating Officer. Tom Bowles found himself in a massed party who were going to visit a straw hat factory; they had two tennis racquets, a putter and one old football boot between ten of them. Raymond Ball, with The Bodger’s No. 7 Iron, and a strange cadet whom Raymond had never seen before, with a fencing foil, were allocated to a visit to a nutmeg plantation.

  Michael took his own racquet and Cartwright a superb Slazenger’s championship racquet to the botanical gardens. Paul was Cadet of the Watch and glad of it.

  George Dewberry’s party were met by one of the distillery’s lorries, redolent with rich spirit and promising well of the visit to come. Tom Bowles was met by an orange bus and Michael by a young negro clergyman leading a crocodile of small black children. A gigantic black chauffeur in a gigantic black Ford waited for Raymond Ball.

  The chauffeur introduced himself by backing the Ford into a melon-stall. Amidst the rolling water-melons, the screams of the stall-keeper, George Dewberry’s raucous shouts from the top of the rum lorry and Michael’s puzzled face on greeting the clergyman, Raymond Ball and the strange cadet drove off.

  ‘The Chief Stoker won’t half be worried,’ said the strange cadet with the fencing foil, as they drove through the crowded streets of the town.

  ‘Why?’ asked Raymond Ball.

  ‘I was supposed to be dipping the tanks for the readings, see, and I was just on me way through the Cadets’ Messdeck when the Cadet Gunner give me this and told me to hop down into the boat sharp. So I did. But the Chief Stoker won’t half be worried.’

  ‘You mean you’re not a cadet?’

  ‘Cadet? I’m the Fresh Water Tanky!’

  ‘Good God! Hey, driver! Stop a minute, there’s been a mistake!’

  The driver turned round. A huge grin split his face from cheek-bone to cheek-bone. The car swerved towards the side of the road.

  ‘No stop, sir,’ said the driver. ‘Stop when we get there, sir.’

  A black face swam nearer Raymond Ball’s eyes. The car squealed as the driver wrenched it away from a wall and headed it down the middle of the street.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Raymond said. ‘It’s too late now. We’re on our way to a nutmeg plantation, by the way.’

  ‘That’s O.K. by me, sir. I could just do with a little bit of black ham.’

  The Fresh Water Tanky put his fencing foil on the floor of the car and sat back to enjoy the ride.

  A mile out of St George the tarmac stopped and the track began. The track was loose gravel and sand and it plunged up and down hills shaded on each side by trees and cane. The sun struck vivid patches of brightness across the car’s path between the intervals of the trees. The openings gave glimpses of more green hills and vegetation in the distance. In villages chickens and children ran across the road almost under the wheels of the car. Sometimes the car passed a bus crammed with cheerful black faces and startlingly coloured cotton dresses. Through the open car window came the smell of the West Indies, the compounded aroma of sugar, ripe fruit already decaying, and rich fertility.

  When the nutmeg planter, a fat, olive-skinned man in a crumpled palm beach suit, greeted his guests, he seemed puzzled by the golf club and the fencing foil.

  ‘You must be very fond of sport,’ he said. ‘I am afraid that we have few facilities here. We haven’t even a tennis court. Did somebody tell you...?’

  The planter broke off in perplexity. Raymond Ball and the Fresh Water Tanky hid their sporting implements behind their backs. A mistake had been made. (Later, The Bodger discovered that the residents had sent their invitations to the Governor’s office and some of them had genuinely been for tennis but a clerk in the office, thinking that all Englishmen played tennis and would be disappointed if not invited to do so in Grenada, had added ‘& Tennis’ to every invitation regardless of the host’s original intentions.)

  ‘Never mind,’ the planter said. ‘Now you would like to see the nutmegs.’

  But it was a hot afternoon and they went no farther than the first shed where the nutmegs were laid out to dry, being occasionally raked over by a bored negro. After that, they sat in deck chairs on the verandah and drank iced lime and lemon. The planter did not seem anxious to entertain them further and Raymond Ball and the Fresh Water Tanky were happy to sit in the shade and do nothing; that in itself was a sufficient change from Barsetshire. They were in the position of people sitting at ease in the house of a stranger who was not anxious to make polite conversation or bother them in any way. It was more than likely that they would leave without even introducing themselves.

  In the evening the planter introduced his wife who was fat, placid, gold-toothed and as incurious as her husband. She made supper of iced coconut milk and grated nutmeg, fried fish and fruit. The planter brought out his whisky and they sat down and drank it as calmly and as unhurriedly and in the same companionable silence as they had drunk lime and lemon.

  After dark they went inside and the planter and his wife set up a mahjongg board. Then the planter clapped his hands and at this signal two octaroon girls came in through the open french windows from the garden and sat down by the guests. They were both young and had the peach-down freshness of skin and the large sloe eyes of their race.

  The planter and his wife yawned, shook hands with their guests and went out of the room. The inference was plain. They had done all they could to make their party a success. They had provided liquor, entertainment, and young women. It was now up to the young men.

  The young men were not at first disposed to take advantage of the facilities offered to them. Drugged by the sun and by successive unaccustomed whiskies, they sat drowsily in their chairs, like the victims of Circe. There was magic in a house which could produce two beautiful young girls at the clap of a hand; it smacked of witchcraft, of a genie’s palace where strange wonders could be wrought from the darkness at the rubbing of a ring.

  The octaroon girls sat at the feet of the chairs seemingly content to wait until some form of activity was suggested to them. Even Raymond Ball, who was normally stimulated by the presence of women, found it difficult to broach the conversation, having so little upon which to start.

  ‘Would you like to play mahjongg?’ he asked at last.

  They played mahjongg. The girls won easily. After the game the girls resumed their positions at the feet of the chairs.

  ‘Would you like to see the nutmeg trees?’ asked the girl nearest Raymond Ball, suddenly.

  ‘Eh? O.K., if you want to. I suppose that’s what we came for, after all.’

  Outside, the evening had grown cool. The house stood on the northern slope of a valley which led to the sea. As Raymond and the octaroon girl stood on the verandah, a fresh wind rustled up the valley from the sea and shivered the tops of the palms. Behind the trees on the crest of the hill on the other side, the moon climbed slowly, its silver circle glowing in the night sky like a jewel. Small clouds sailed high and powdery in an indigo sky. The fronds of the trees in the valley bent together and dappled as the wind touched them; the whole of the opposite hillside rippled like a smooth ocean breaking into tiny waves, spreading out and fading back into stillness again. Faint sounds came up out of the darkness, the tinkling of an instrument like a triangle, the throb as of drums, and calling voices, but up on the hillside it was quiet.

  Raymond Ball felt the girl close to him. He stood looking down the valley, conscious of her closeness.

  Suddenly she turned and put her arms round his neck, and lightly kissed him on the lips. Her lips were firm and warm and caressed him as they left him.

  ‘I know what you want,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you? What?’

  ‘It looks out of your eyes.’

  He put his hands on her hips and felt their suppleness. ‘All right,’ he said firmly, ‘show me these bloody nutmeg trees.’

  When Raymond Ball arrived back on board Barsetshire, Ge
orge Dewberry was giving trouble. The tour of the rum distillery had been a roaring success. Dewberry had been helped back from it, paralysed with rum. Raymond Ball helped to undress George Dewberry, pack him in his hammock and lash him down.

  ‘I don’t know how he gets like that’ he said to Michael, as they stood panting after their exertions. ‘Just show him anything remotely connected with the alcohol family and he gets paralytic!’

  Raymond Ball began to undress.

  ‘Where’ve you been today, Ray?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Oh, visiting a nutmeg plantation.’

  ‘What have you been doing to them, cutting them down or something? You look positively grey. And, my God, look at your back! It’s all scratched to hell! Looks as though you’ve been wallowing in nutmeg trees.’

  ‘They’re very interesting things. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed looking at a tree more in my life.’

  The novelty of being Cadet of the Watch had long worn off for Paul. He had helped the Gunnery Officer supervise the unloading of three boat-loads of cheering, rum-stricken sailors and he could hear a fourth boat approaching the ship.

  The fourth boat brought Paul’s reward. It contained Able Seaman Froggins. Just before he went off watch Paul was privileged to see Able Seaman Froggins, armed with a palm-chopping machete, chasing the Gunnery Officer round the quarterdeck.

  12

  At Georgetown, Barbados, Barsetshire gave an official cocktail party, as she had done at every port she visited. The invitations for the party were distributed before Barsetshire arrived, and although it might have been a matter of concern to the British residents whether or not they were invited, the cadets worried not at all.

  The quarterdeck decorations in Barsetshire were identical at every cocktail party and were indeed standard for all cocktail parties in all H.M. Ships. They depended for their effect, not on any especial artistic merit, but upon their novelty for the guests, most of whom only rarely visited a warship. ‘We could cover the ship with fishhooks and barbed wire,’ The Bodger said, ‘and they’d still be thrilled to bits.’

  The quarterdeck was scrubbed and every piece of visible brass was polished. The vulgar and utilitarian wooden cages which concealed the bollards and the after capstan were covered with white cloths and vases of flowers. The quarterdeck guard-rails were bound with canvas screens and flags were hung from the quarterdeck awning. Burnished shell cases were placed at intervals as ashtrays. One bar ran down one side of the quarterdeck and a second bar ran down the other. A third bar was placed across the after end at right angles to the other two. The guests were thus confined in a small arena surrounded on three sides by a barricade of drinks and glasses; a guest who struck out in three out of four directions would find something to drink and in the fourth he would find the toilet.

  While the duty watch of cadets were rigging the quarterdeck, Mr Sammidge, the Commissioned Catering Officer, and a working party of stewards were preparing innumerable canapés, cocktail sausages, potato crisps and tiny sandwiches. Mr Sammidge watched the preparations with a careful eye. He had been in the Navy long enough to know his way about and, as this was his last commission, he hoped to make enough out of it to add to what he had made out of other commissions and set up in a small hotel of his own when he left the service.

  ‘Come out from among them flowers’ he said to a steward whom he could see lurking behind a thick zareba of tropical flowers which he and the ship’s postman had brought on board that morning.

  ‘Here,’ he shouted at another steward who was letting his appetite for the canapés get the better of him. ‘Keep your hands off them c’naipes. Them c’naipes is for the tables. You two start taking them plates up. Crisps at the far end for the cadets and the c’naipes in the middle. Keep the keviar this end for the Governor. Not too many now. Take some up now and some later. Them olives has got to last. They don’t grow on trees, you know.’

  Next door in the Wardroom Wine Store, the Captain’s Steward, Knowles, and one of the Wardroom barmen, Marine Stubble, were mixing the drinks under the supervision of the Gunnery Officer, who was the Wardroom Wine Caterer.

  ‘White Lady! Cointreau, one bottle!’ The Gunnery Officer read out the recipes as though he were giving the detail for loading and firing a gun.

  Knowles lifted the Cointreau bottle and gravely allowed its contents to gurgle into the silver soup tureen in which the drinks were being made. He let the bottle drip until it was empty and solemnly replaced it on the table with the dispassionate composure of a priest of Rome pouring a libation to Jove on the Capitoline Hill amongst the swirling incense, the fluttering pigeons and the chanting choirs.

  ‘Gin, Gordon’s! Six bottles!’

  Knowles took the bottles as Marine Stubble handed them to him and repeated the lugubrious sacrificial procedure.

  ‘Ice!’

  Marine Stubble carried up a bucket and let slide a glittering avalanche.

  ‘Lemon. Cherries.’

  Knowles and Marine Stubble took turns to bring up the ingredients in obedience to the whiplash tones of the Gunnery Officer.

  ‘What’s that other bottle there?’

  ‘Sherry, sir,’ said Marine Stubble.

  ‘Put that in as well.’

  Impassively, Marine Stubble poured the bottle of sherry into the tureen. No expression crossed his face. Marine Stubble was a teetotaller.

  ‘Now, then. Next. Planter’s Punch ...’

  Several decks down and some way forward of the Wardroom Wine Store, the Double Bottom Chief Stoker was also preparing for the party. His was a vital part.

  Past cocktail parties had shown that the normal trim of the ship left a gap between the decks of the motorboats and the bottom step of the gangway; lady guests had been forced to draw up their skirts to an unconscionable extent, under the licentious eyes of the boats’ crews and the gangway staff. Whenever Barsetshire gave a party the D.B. Chief Stoker lowered the stern of the ship by transferring oil fuel. It was a proceeding which never failed to arouse comment amongst his stokers but the Chief Stoker had not served twenty years in the Navy without learning how to quell junior ratings.

  ‘Stop nattering and get on with it. You’re being butchered to make a wardroom holiday, that’s what.’

  Ten minutes before the start of the party Mr Sammidge came up on to the quarterdeck to check the distribution of canapés, the Gunnery Officer surveyed the disposition of glasses and drinks, and the D.B. Chief Stoker measured the distance from the gangway to the water line by eye. The preparations were completed and everything now depended upon the conversational powers of the hosts.

  The hosts stood in groups on the quarterdeck, dressed in white uniforms, sampling the work of the Gunnery Officer and his staff; none of Barsetshire’s officers would have contemplated the idea of entertaining a quarterdeck full of complete strangers while sober. No man can be sociable, neither can he dance, in cold blood.

  The Bodger had briefed the cadets in the art of broaching a stranger. ‘Offer him a cigarette,’ The Bodger said, ‘and a drink, ask him if this is his first time on board, and tell him what wonderful weather he has in the West Indies. All quite simple. Remember he’s not the vaguest bit interested in you and he knows everybody else at the party and you don’t. He’s probably only come because it’s the right thing to do and shows that he moves in the right circles and he’s just waiting to get away from you and talk business to someone. A good many of the people you’ll meet will be either social or professional climbers and that holds good all over the world. Whatever you do, let him talk if he wants to. They all speak English here, which is an advantage you won’t always have. Everybody has got some particular subject which will keep him happy for hours. All you’ve got to do is find it and then say “How interesting” and “You don’t say” and “Well, I never knew that” and so on and he’ll think what a wonderful conversationalist you are and invite you to dinner and introduce his daughter and then you’re all set. Then it’s your turn. You can bore the
daughter as much as her father bored you.’

  Michael approached a negro clergyman. He was very tall, with a dead black complexion and startlingly white hair. He wore a white linen suit, black surplice and white dog-collar. The man’s whole appearance was an ensemble of black and white.

  ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ Michael asked.

  ‘No,’ said the Black and White Padre. ‘I do not smoke.’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No. I do not drink.’

  ‘Oh well. ... Is this your first visit on board this ship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you think of it?’

  ‘I have been on board only five minutes.’

  ‘Oh I see. What lovely weather you have in the West Indies. Much nicer than England.’

  ‘Except for the hurricane last month.’

  ‘That must have been terrible.’

  ‘It was good.’

  ‘Dear me, a hurricane good?’

  ‘Never has my church been so full as after that.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘People wished to give thanks for their lives.’

  ‘I see. It’s an ill wind which blows no one any good. Hurricane, I mean.’

  ‘My church is still full.’

  ‘That must be very encouraging for you, sir.’

  ‘Another hurricane is expected next month.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Michael and the Black and White Padre gazed helplessly at each other. They both spoke English but that was all they had in common.

  Near by, Colin Stacforth was entertaining a stout woman in a flowered print dress. Her eyebrows were severely plucked, her eyes were haloed in mascara and her lipstick exceeded the natural line of her lips by an eighth of an inch. Two bright red spots of rouge stood out on her cheekbones and she wore long dangling earrings which were miniature goldfish bowls. She had a low growling voice and Colin Stacforth, who was the acknowledged cadet expert at cocktail parties, mentally dubbed her the Scarlet Woman.