Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  This manoeuvre executed, the PC called the OOD (the Officer on Duty, mind) to witness. ‘Sir, look at his fingers, sir.’

  Everybody looked.

  On a small rise overlooking the parade ground, where another small mast and yardarm were in business, the preparatory pennant fluttered up on its halyard.

  ‘Five minutes to colours, sir,’ carolled a leading seaman.

  ‘Fall in!’ the OOD roared, ‘After colours I’ll make you see colours!’

  Having duly presented arms, Vanlangenburg was yanked out of file again. The PC gave him a withering look. ‘Tell me . . . tell me how you come on parade with some black shit all over your fingers. Stand erect! Don’t fidget like you got worms in your arse! Your mother is a Kathakali dancer? Well?’

  ‘Sir, I was polishing boots, sir.’

  ‘Look, you bloody moron, one pair of boots to polish for morning divisions and you get polish up to your fucking elbows. Look at your fingernails!’ and looking to heaven for guidance, ‘is this a bloody seaman or some fucking lunatic?’

  The heavens took no notice. Nobody on earth offered an opinion either, although given the choice.

  ‘All the boots,’ Vanlangenburg muttered.

  ‘All the boots? What boots? Are you trying to drive me mad?’

  The dam burst. ‘Thirty pairs. Thirty bloody pairs every day. This is why I joined the Navy? To polish the other buggers’ boots?’ He thrust a hand under the PC’s nose. ‘See my fucking hands . . . and I have to stand here and listen to you! What the fuck do you know? I’m a bloody moron, I’m a bloody lunatic . . . Damn easy for you to stand here and say whatever comes into your head. Wearing white shoes and coming! You’re not putting polish on them!’

  The colour guard was in convulsions. The OOD stepped discreetly away. The PC blanched. This was a recruit!

  ‘Fall in!’ he screamed, ‘Stand erect! Stand still the rest of you. Ordinary Seaman Vanlangenburg, report to the regulating office at ten hundred hours.’

  Vanlangenburg didn’t budge. He regarded the PC sourly. ‘All cock!’ he said, ‘Bloody rubbish. Ten hundred hours. Why can’t you say ten o’clock like other people? Calling me a lunatic. Bloody mad buggers you all are!’ and he swaggered back, rifle tilted crazily on his shoulder.

  ‘Colour guard will retire! Abaaaht—tern! Deees—miss!’

  ‘Like hell!’ Vanlangenburg snarled and, carrying his rifle like a scythe, strode to the regulating office where a fat-faced Malay quartermaster raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Whadd’you want?’

  Freezing the man with a look, Vanlangenburg shouldered past.

  Nobody knew what transpired in that office. Sick Bay Attendant Winnie told Ordinary Signalman ‘Daft’ Fernando, ‘Sin, men, now don’t know what will happen. Shouldn’t have made him polish like that.’

  The others hung round, waiting, wondering.

  ‘There, he’s coming,’ Carloboy hissed.

  Vanlangenburg emerged. He carried his rifle as carelessly as ever and Sims remarked, ‘have been removing the bayonet also.’

  True, there was no fixed bayonet. That piece of equipment hung demurely in its ‘frog’ on the web belt. The others creased foreheads, trying to interpret this sign.

  Vanlangenburg came up, fixed wrathful eyes on his messmates, strode into the hut and flung his rifle—thunk—on his bunk. Then he spun round and seized Ordinary Telegraphist Thiaga by the throat. ‘Gum,’ he grated, ‘Gimme some gum.’

  Thiaga’s eyes bulged. He was a small-made, cheery little Tamil who grinned a lot and had very white teeth in a very black face. ‘Here, let go,’ he burbled. He was growing purple, which, on black, made him look awful.

  ‘Gum,’ Vanlangenburg growled, taking his hand away and leaving a blacker smear on a black neck.

  Thiaga knew that it was not his to reason why. If gum was the need of the hour, so be it. In pots. In a barrel if desired. He opened his locker with nerveless fingers.

  ‘Oi George,’ Todwell sang out, ‘what happ—’

  ‘You shut up!’ Vanlangenburg snarled, snatched at the Gripfix and extracted a sheet of paper from his pocket. Smearing glue on it, he kicked the hut door shut, slapped on the paper. Then he turned and grinned. ‘If you can’t shine your boots, you can go and shit in them!’ he said grandly.

  It was an order from the CO:

  ALL RATINGS WILL POLISH THEIR OWN BOOTS OR ELSE

  ‘Or else what?’ Electrician’s Mate Koelmeyer demanded.

  ‘That you go and ask.’ Vanlangenburg was relaxing in his bunk. ‘Go now and ask if you like.’

  Nobody wished to.

  But matters did not end there, for Ordinary Telegraphist Carlo Nugawira had a brainwave when mucking about in the paint store one morning. He dabbed at his work boots . . . then gave them a gentle coating of Black Japan, and lo! they shone with a faery light. With little croaks of delight he rushed to the hut and stood before the others in twin pools of glory.

  The boys gaped. ‘What the fuck did you do?’ someone asked with a catch in his voice.

  ‘Painted them! Painted the bloody things. Now how? No more polishing. Just wipe. And if they get scratched or anything can put summore paint. Pukka, no?’ He gave Vanlangenburg a pitying look. ‘You rub,’ he said patronizingly, ‘one brush of paint and our job’s over.’

  Even Vanlangenburg took notice. ‘Shine like that even I can’t get,’ he breathed, ‘like enamel, men. What for sitting here and rubbing?’

  ‘My mouth is also dry,’ Sims said, ‘spitting like this.’

  The vote was unanimous. ‘Let’s all go and paint the fucking things.’

  The Platoon Commander was in ecstasies. Why, the man actually drooled. Being at best a most sarcastic prune, he even permitted himself a little smile that touched the corner of his mouth, making it look rather like the vagina of a Shetland mare. He said feelingly that he wished to congratulate the squad on its most seamanlike turnout. He even hinted that he would be forced to wear sunglasses in future and waited for his charges to appreciate the joke. He conducted his inspection in the dreamy manner of a man, sunk in an armchair in Sun City, who suddenly found Miss World in his lap.

  The boys ha-ha’d politely. They knew he was trying hard to be human and pitied him immensely. His order to dismiss was sheer saccharine. As they marched away, the sun making silver autographs on the Black Japan, they heard his small squeal of satisfaction.

  It took a few days for the paint to crack. Who the devil thought it would? It began to flake off in bits and pieces and then to cobweb in hideous scrawls and wrinkles. Ordinary Telegraphist Yusuf threw up his hands and announced that the time had come to kill himself.

  ‘Never mind all that. You can kill yourself afterwards. What are we going to do now?’

  Aloysius groaned. ‘Now will have to dump them in kerosene oil or something and scrape the paint off.’

  ‘You and your paint!’ Carloboy stormed, and Nugawira raised a doleful face and mumbled that it was not his fault.

  ‘Never mind that now. What are we going to do?’ Koelmeyer asked.

  True, each had two pairs of boots, but one was used for everyday working parties, fatigues and general clumping around camp. Parades, divisions, colour guards and all other such ceremonial hoo-ha’s required the other pair. They looked hopefully at their work boots. They closed their eyes and then looked again with hope plus imagination. The general opinion was that they looked as though they had been lain in line and sodomized by a hippopotamus. But, at least, they hadn’t been encrusted in paint. They could be nursed, brought up to scratch.

  They formed rank for colour guard the next morning with the distinct feeling that all would not be well.

  ‘Von Bloss! Your boots are a bloody disgrace!’

  The boy scorned reply. It would do no good to tell this excitable man that he had laboured, yes, laboured, from eight o’clock to ‘lights out’, grimly bringing his work boots to a semblance of the ceremonial. True, the boots were not beautiful, but quite winsome. A
sort of wholesome, homely beauty. He had felt as though he had performed a major archaeological restoration.

  ‘Answer me! Why are your boots not polished?’

  Carloboy kept eyes front. T polished them, sir.’

  ‘How? You rubbed them on your bum?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘No sir, I did not think of that, sir. Next time I will sir.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Fall out! Fall out! Fall out!’

  Carloboy fell out. Most excitable, this character.

  The old song of the leading seaman carried across the parade ground. ‘Five minutes to colours, sir.’

  The rest of the squad, also asked to fall out, were standing wherever they had fallen out and the PC was ready for a cosy session with a psychiatrist. From the quarter deck the CO looked at the most unusual formation and asked the First Lieutenant whether this was regulation procedure. The signalman on the hillock began to jiggle the preparatory pennant. One minute to eight o’clock. The PC shut his eyes in anguish, fired a mental DHL to the devas and screamed, ‘What are you all doing out of rank! Fall in! Fall in! Fall in! Squad—hough! Slooope—arrmhz!’

  Fantastic! As the white ensign climbed gracefully, they presented arms in general salute. The sound of the bosun’s pipe died. Time for Act One, Scene Two.

  ‘Will you bastards kindly tell me why you conspire to drive me crazy at eight o’clock in the fucking morning!’

  No answer:

  ‘You! Yes, you!’ a quivering finger stabbed in the direction of Cook-steward Haramanis.

  Haramanis was most uncomfortable with the English language. He had joined the Navy with a single intention: to sit in a galley and cook. ‘Eh?’ he said.

  Eyes rolled. Then all the working of the face seemed to congeal. ‘I suppose you all polished your boots for morning divisions?’ Quite reasonable, the tone of voice.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘I see . . . ’ still the sweet tone of reason, ‘You, Todwell, you did polish your little booties, didn’t you? Let me see . . . you sat on your little bunk with a little boot in your hand and you polished and polished, didn’t you?’

  Todwell looked down hastily. He had size nine feet in size ten boots. Call those little? ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And how long did you take to polish them?’

  ‘Almost an hour, sir.’

  ‘Liar!’ he was off again. ‘What do you take me for? What do you take me for! One hour you polished to come on parade like this?’

  Todwell believed that it always took two to tango. He held his peace.

  ‘You know what I think? None of you polished your boots! Isn’t that so?’

  No answer.

  ‘Right. I’ll show you buggers. This is mutiny, do you hear? Mutiny! You all thought you could come on parade in dirty boots. That’s it. That’s it! Right—high port arms!

  Mechanically rifles were raised over heads, held up at arms length.

  ‘Squad will advance! Lef’ tarrrn! At the double—quick—march!’

  Away they went, the entire colour guard, running all over the parade ground, rifles aloft, round and round, this way, that way, any way. The PC ran behind, hooted, ‘Pick your feet up there! Hup, hup, hup, hup, hup—abaht tarn! Hup, hup, hup, hup!’

  It was hard to tell who or what were or was more ridiculous: the squad bouncing around with rifles held up like trophies of war, or the PC who trotted behind screaming ‘hup, hup, hup’.

  Carloboy gasped, ‘Do these buggers get as mad as this so early in the morning?’ and Ordinary Seaman Jayasinghe puffed and gritted that his hands were numb.

  The tragic case of the Japanned boots was finally solved with the liberal application of turpentine and much earnest cajoling to make the ill-treated leather respond. Sims was the least patient. ‘This is why we joined the fucking Navy,’ he intoned. He had a corn and the unscheduled morning sprint had been most unkind to it. ‘To polish and pipeclay and arrange bunks . . . ’ he scowled furiously and ejected a blob of spittle on a toecap.

  Todwell rose, stretched wearily.

  ‘Hup, hup, hup, hup,’ sang out Koelmeyer, and they all dissolved into helpless laughter.

  It was also hard for the boys to take kindly to the menial work thrust upon them. They had sniggered when they heard that nautically, lavatories were called ‘heads’.

  ‘Heads? A shit house is a head?’ These Navy-wallahs were crazy.

  ‘Maybe it’s because that’s where the tails are flushed,’ Carloboy hazarded.

  They naturally bridled when told that among their many interesting duties was heads detail. It was no earthly use telling duty officers that one came from a good family, or that never in one’s delicate years had one taken a mop and bucket to a loo. Their protests went unheeded. They were told that scouring lavatories was an important part of ‘wrap-up’ training for shipboard duties. On board, apparently, sailors clean lavatories’. Well, someone has to do it. ‘Start now,’ they were told, ‘get used to it.’

  ‘That’s a load of shit.’

  ‘Of course it is. What do you think life is?’

  In Rangalla, the heads were, in reality, massive cesspits, dug deep and long beneath an awesome row of squatting plates. The heads were christened Cigarette City because, from days of yore, all recruits, forbidden to smoke, had done so in the privacy of the heads. Privacy? Scratch that. There were no doors to any of the privies. Yet, each was a recruit’s haven. The heads . . . and a cigarette . . . ah, bliss!

  Each time a recruit was detailed to clean the heads, an able seaman was sent along to supervise. The Navy had apparently reasoned that a recruit on heads detail would smoke if allowed to work unsupervised. It had never occurred to the brass that smoking is what a recruit gleefully indulges in when availing himself of the mod. cons., not when scrubbing them.

  Carloboy shrugged. He disliked this detail and he didn’t like the AB either. ‘What do you want to come for? I’ll clean the place and come.’

  ‘You go and bring the buckets and squeegee,’ the AB retorted.

  ‘So what are you going to do? Just stand and watch?’

  ‘That’s not your business. You do what you have to do. Go on!’

  It was quite nauseating to find that the pit beneath a squatting plate held a dead cat. AB Jayasena looked at it interestedly. ‘Get it out,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That cat. How to leave a cat in the shithole? Get it out.’

  Carloboy agreed. As it was, very fat, green flies were crawling over it, some supping delicately. ‘Okay, I’ll get a stick or something.’

  The AB gave him a deadpan look. ‘Just get it out now.’

  ‘So all right. I’ll get something to pull it out. How about a boat hook?’

  Jayasena spat. ‘No hooks and sticks. Take it out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘With your fucking hand!’

  Carloboy straightened up. Perhaps what the Navy so sorely wanted to do from the eighteenth November—discipline him—had reached the acid-test stage, but he thought that this was pushing things too far. ‘What? Put my hand in that?’

  ‘Yes. That’s an order!’

  The trouble with being a recruit was that every lowlife in uniform who wasn’t, liked giving orders . . . and every recruit knew that he was knee-deep in the cranberry sauce when someone yelled, ‘That’s an order’. It meant, in strict naval parlance, that disobedience was tantamount to mutiny.

  In the old days, mutiny merited death, yardarm hanging, or that unpleasant business of being keelhauled. The offender was tied to a long line, tossed into the sea and then dragged along the keel of the ship. In this way he would meet thousands of barnacles that resented him and gave him a most bruising welcome. The idea is that a recruit must comply, and complain.

  Carloboy considered the pros and cons. If he wished to challenge this repulsive AB’s attitude he would have to (a) take the dead cat out of the pit with his hand, (b) complain to the regulat
ing petty officer who would record his statement, (c) go before the CO or the First Lieutenant at a special requestman’s parade to air his grievance, and (d) abide by the CO’s or Number One’s decision. (By the way, First Lieutenants are also Number Ones or Jimmys).

  This, to the new boys on the block, seemed and sounded most satisfactory. They felt that wherever their ship sailed, even half-way up Sri Lanka’s central massif, the Geneva Convention sailed with them and the rights of all mankind and naval recruits were upheld and protected. What happens, however, is quite another ball game.

  A case in point:

  ‘Recruit Udurawana states that on the morning of November 26, he was ordered to bend over and grasp his ankles, and when in that position, Able Seaman Mendis and Able Seaman Wijesekera swatted him on the posterior—’

  ‘On the what?’

  ‘The posterior, sir.’

  ‘You mean his bum?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then say bum, man.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Very well, go on.’

  ‘Very good sir. Swatted him on the bum with a belaying pin. Recruit Udurawana states that he protested and asked why he was being so ill-treated, but he was told to shut up and bend over and that that was an order. Recruit Udurawana complied and says he was hurt and greatly humiliated. He says he received several blows on his pos—um—bum. He now makes this complaint, sir.’

  ‘I see. Is recruit Udurawana here?’

  ‘Yessir. Recruit Udurawana . . . two steps forward march!’

  ‘Are the AB’s here?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Ummm . . . yes. Ordinary Seaman Udurawana, you are very justified in making this complaint. You claim you were assaulted. This is a serious charge. Have you any witnesses?’

  ‘N—No sir.’

  ‘Oh. Were you medically treated?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Did you show your bloody arse to a doctor?’

  ‘No—no sir.’

  ‘Then what the devil are you wasting my time for? You, Mendis, Wijesekera, did you—’

  ‘No sir.’ (In chorus).

  ‘There you are. Shall I tell you something, Udurawana? You come here trotting out some bloody bogus complaint to embarrass this ship and my position as CO. Do you understand? You come here wasting my time, and not an atom of proof! Stop fidgeting! Stand straight! Let me warn you—the next time you come before me I’ll throw the bloody book at you! Do you hear?’