We Saw The Sea

by John Winton

“Ordinary Seaman Gawn. He’s in young Hobbes’s division.”

  The Commander consulted his file.

  “It’s all right. He’s number three. Ask Hobbes to come and see me.”

  Michael, however, was not thinking of compassionate cases. He was taking a shore telephone call on the ship’s exchange. After the normal exhortations and reassurances from the ship’s exchange operator, Michael heard a thin far-away voice, like a voice from the past.

  “Hello. Hellohello. Is that Michael Hobbes? Operator, I thought you said I was through now? Hello?”

  “Lieutenant Hobbes speaking,” Michael said.

  “That you, Mike? Spink here.”

  “Who?”

  “Freddie! Freddie Spink!”

  “Freddie!“

  “The same. Tommy Mitchell told me you were out here now. It’s about the only sensible thing he’s said since he got here. Keeps burbling about women. What?”

  “I thought he was supposed to relieve you days ago?”

  “I know, old boy, that was the official plan but things are a bit complicated with the Barracks at the moment. They keep agitating about a wine audit we should have done. It’s a long story and I won’t bore you with it. What I really wanted to ask you was whether you can come ashore tonight? Have you seen anything of Honkers yet?”

  “We had a few drinks last night. . .

  “You come ashore with me and I’ll show you around.”

  “I’d be delighted, Freddie.”

  “I’ll see you in the Gloucester Lounge at half after seven, then.”

  “Can’t you come on board here first and get up some flying speed?”

  “I won’t if you don’t mind, old boy. I’m a bit fed up with the Grey Funnel Line at the moment and your vessel is a hot-bed of it. Is Paul there?”

  “He’s around.”

  “Ask him if he can come too.”

  “That’ll be splendid, Freddie!”

  “See you.”

  Carousel had a long naval tradition behind her in Hong Kong. Joan and her nieces had cleaned the boot-topping of every warship on the station within living memory and the Chinese tradesmen who came on board and set up stalls of lacquer work, brocades, silks and ivory in the Canteen Flat had orders from naval officers and ratings in their books dating back for more than thirty years. The tradesmen who came on board were merely the advance guard of a mighty battalion of shopkeepers who waited in the narrow teeming streets off the Gloucester Road for the Navy to come ashore. Hong Kong was the gateway to Communist China, a bright oasis on the extreme edge of a dark forbidden continent. It was the only port open to the Navy between Singapore to the south-west, and Japan to the north-east.

  Neither Michael nor Paul had seen Frederick Augustus Spink for over three years. When they did see him, they hardly recognized him. He was wearing a pale beige Irish linen suit, a silk tie, light green nylon socks and white leather open sandals. As he sat in the Gloucester Lounge negligently sipping a German lager and smoking an American cigarette he seemed to Michael and Paul, in their heavy English clothes, the picture of the leisured oriental lounge lizard who may be observed in his natural surroundings in any first-class hotel lounge from Colombo to Honolulu. Fie had lost the greater part of his hair and the dome of his head was bronzed by the sun of Repulse Bay. He rose when he saw them.

  “Michael! Paul! How nice to see you again! “

  A Chinese waiter hurried to their table with two more lagers; Paul guessed that Freddie Spink was an old and valued customer.

  “I can recommend this stuff,” said Freddie.

  “God, Freddie,” said Paul, “what’s happened to your hair?”

  “Gone with the wind, dear boy. Penalty of the Orient. Now, how are you both? Well, I hope? Apart from being in love, of course. How’s Mary? Does she still love you?”

  “Yes,” said Michael. “I hope so.”

  “And how about your light o’love, Paul? I’ve forgotten her name for the minute. I only got it through the grapevine the other day. Anne?”

  “Bouncing,” said Paul. He was intrigued by the new Freddie Spink. This was not the shy nervous boy who had been so frightened by everything that happened to him in Barsetshire and about whom The Bodger had had so many misgivings. He was now a mature man, so mature that Paul thought that perhaps he had gone to seed; there was a lassitude about Freddie Spink which suggested that he had already tried everything and found none of it worth finishing. He was blasé. Paul found himself more surprised and interested by the present Freddie Spink than he had ever been by the old; Paul could say with truth that he had never really noticed Freddie Spink as a cadet.

  “Anybody I know in your mighty ark?” Freddie asked.

  “You might remember The Bodger,” Michael said, casually.

  “Is he really here? I heard he was. What a pity I’m just leaving. We need someone like him to brighten the place up.”

  “What about you, Freddie,” said Paul. “What’s this we hear about you marrying a Chinese girl?”

  Freddie paused with his glass to his lips.

  “Eh? What’s all this?”

  “Tommy Mitchell told us he was relieving you to save you from a fate worse than death with a Chinese tottie.”

  “So that’s why he arrived so bloody early! I thought Their Lordships had got wise to one or two of my little activities. I can see how it all arose now. My uncle runs one of the better night-clubs on the Kowloon side, in fact the best night-club here. Whenever you see a first-class night-club you can bet it’s run by a Spink. Fords make motor cars, Rothschilds manipulate money and we run night-clubs. My uncle is half Chinese and he introduced me to a Chinese family here and the daughter is an absolute honey. She went to Oxford and all that and she’s one of the most charming girls you could meet anywhere. I used to take her about a bit, to the C.-in-C.’s ball and things like that. But I never intended to marry the girl.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would,” said Paul.

  “Oh, it’s not on my side I can assure you,” said Freddie. “It’s her family who would never have allowed it.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “What, let their daughter marry a naval officer, even though he does come from the best white-slaving circles? They aim a bit higher than that, I can tell you.”

  “How very disappointing,” said Michael.

  “Mind you,” said Freddie, “I shan’t be sorry to go. The social set, so-called, of this place, was beginning to get me down a bit. D’you know, when Calypso arrived on the station a couple of years ago she gave a cocktail party. Their Captain’s Sec told me that it was like a party where the guests knew each other much better than the hosts. Which was quite true of course. The Locals gathered in groups and talked for two solid hours about people and events which the poor blokes in Calypso knew nothing about. And then a day or two later their Sec was at another party ashore and he met a girl who had been to their party on board. She didn’t recognize him or ask him what he did for a living and she said ‘My dear!’ or words to that effect, ‘we went to the most killingly boring party on Tuesday on that boat that’s just come in. There were so many people there I knew that really I might just as well have gone to the Tennis Club. They had some terrible old red cocktails and the same old flags and things you see in all those boats.’ Poor old Sec. I felt for him.”

  “Why for him particularly?”

  “He was Calypso's Mess Sec. at the time.”

  “Cor blimey,” said Paul, “you don’t paint a very encouraging picture of Hong Kong.”

  “Ha, that’s only one side, and the least important side. I’ll show you how the other half lives now. Drink up men, and I’ll take you on Spink’s conducted tour of Hong Kong, licensed by Cooks and countenanced by the Board of Trade. I will be your Virgil through the dark underworld of this jewel of the orient.”

  “How many beers did you say you’d had?”

  “A modicum, my dear Paul, a modicum. We step outside and regardez! Hong Kong by night!”


  Hong Kong was blazing with lights. A stranger to the city stood amazed before them, like Sinbad at noon in the Valley of Diamonds. Lights poured and tumbled from the Peak in glittering waterfalls, archipelagos of lights, brilliant necklaces and pendants thrown on a velvet cloth. Headlights on the twisting Peak road shone out, were eclipsed and shone out again. The neon-lit Chinese characters were like signs traced in the sky by the glowing end of a magician’s wand.

  “Look at that sign,” said Paul. “It probably means ‘Soap’ but in Chinese it looks like a magic formula.”

  “Actually, it means ‘Girls’,” said Freddie. “Let’s go to Uncle’s.”

  Uncle’s was at the top of a flight of stairs which mounted between two buildings. It was a large room, lit by oil lamps which stood on small lacquered tables. The lamps were shaded by paper screens which were decorated with paintings of flowers, birds and fruit. The floor was covered with a carpet on which a huge dragon writhed and gaped its mouth at the door. The walls were curtained by folds of brocade cloth decorated in the same patterns as the lamp screens. The place smelled of spices and, Paul decided, money.

  Freddie Spink crossed to one of the tables and before he reached it a Chinese had come from behind a curtain and placed a chair for him. Two more Chinese brought chairs for Michael and Paul.

  “There don’t seem to be any women about,” said Paul.

  “Patience, dear boy, patience. It’s early yet. They won’t turn up till later. Besides, we’re on a drinking run tonight. You can’t afford this place, anyway.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “No. Nor could I if it weren’t Uncle’s.”

  They ate clear soup, sour pork and dishes of savouries. Then they had chow ming and lychees and cups of China tea. Michael felt bloated. Freddie Spink talked about Hong Kong.

  “Trade’s good at the moment. This whole place is booming, you know. A lot of Chinese business men came here when the Communists took over China. They either had the choice of staying in China where they were likely to get their heads cut off any minute or go to Formosa where there’s little scope. Or here. Most of them chose to come here. That’s why there’s so much building going on.”

  It was clear that Freddie Spink was completely at home in Hong Kong. He took them to quiet bars where Chinese in business suits were drinking tea; taxi dance halls where the girls could be purchased by ticket; dark caverns where Coca Cola, the only drink served, cost as much as whisky but included the services of a Chinese girl; and to garish places full of American airline pilots and thin girls in slit-skirt dresses. Freddie Spink was known wherever he went. Bartenders hurried to serve him when they saw him standing at the bar. Taxi-dance girls clustered round his table and rickshaw boys understood his directions.

  “You seem to know where the heads are in every bar in this place,” Paul said.

  “I ought to,” answered Freddie. “You know, I get the feeling there’s a pretty powerful team ashore tonight. Are any of your wardroom ashore tonight?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Michael. “Nothing special, anyway.”

  Freddie Spink was not convinced. He was sure that somebody had been stirring up his favourite haunts.

  “Everyone seems very excited tonight.”

  Freddie Spink was as sensitive as a great fish feeling the presence of an alien current in his own pool. He arranged his tour so that they arrived back at the dockyard at one o’clock.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s that. I must go and say my tender good-byes now. I’m off to Australia the day after tomorrow.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I’ve got quite a bit of leave due to me and I thought I might go and see some relations. A friend of mine has offered me a lift in a plane so I might as well go home that way as any. It’s almost as quick from here.”

  “Who have you got to say your fond farewells to, if you don’t mind my asking?” asked Paul.

  Freddie grinned. “I have got a little Chinese popsy here actually. I didn’t know anyone knew about it. It shook me quite a lot when you mentioned it. Just shows, you can’t fool the grapevine. Good night, fellows.”

  As Michael and Paul turned in at the dockyard gates, they saw that there had indeed been a powerful team ashore that night. Their attention was attracted by an uproar coming from the direction of the ferry. While they watched, a large crowd came running round the corner, headed by two rickshaws. In the leading rickshaw sat The Bodger, ringing a handbell and shouting “More revs! More revs!” Second by half a length and on the outside of the bend was the Commander who was waving a vast ivory fan and bellowing “Mush! Mush!“ at the top of his voice. The rest of the crowd was made up of several yelling small boys, three or four sailors who had lost their caps, an empty rickshaw, a yellow mongrel, and, in the rear, two breathless members of the Hong Kong Constabulary.

  6

  “This new Jimmy,” said Leading Seaman Jones, known to the messdeck as Hooky, “bit of a fire-eating bastard.”

  “He’s a --- menace,” said a swarthy Able Seaman called Golightly sitting opposite. “Trooped me yesterday for a --- haircut.”

  “How’s that, Golly?” enquired the rest of the messdeck.

  Golightly glanced round to make sure of his audience.

  “I was standing outside the --- Regulating Office when along comes the Jimmy. Get your hair cut Golightly, he says. I’ve just had it cut, I says. Well, get it cut again, he says and stand a bit closer to the razor this time. I thought --- .“

  Able Seaman Golightly relished the laughter of the messdeck.

  “And then he says, what you doing standing outside the Regulating Office anyway, he says. Why ain’t you working in your part of ship?”

  “So what did you --- say to him, Golly?”

  “I said, this is my part of ship, outside the Regulating Office.”

  The Bodger’s personality had swept through the mess-decks and life of Carousel like a breath of cold fresh air. The organization of a ship and the care of sailors was The Bodger’s profession and he had had nearly fifteen years experience in it. The tools of his trade were a knowledge of the Navy’s resources and an ability to study men; The Bodger read the sailors’ faces as accurately as his predecessors of two hundred years had read the clouds to predict the wind. The Bodger understood the sailors’ chief needs and he knew how far the Navy’s official organization could satisfy them. The Bodger knew better than anyone on board the structure of authority and comfort which it was the First Lieutenant’s duty to build and he set about building it as confidently as a skilled carpenter making a cabinet. His first concern was the state of the messdecks. He discussed the habitability of the ship with the Commander who agreed that while nothing could be done about the numbers of men on board, the surroundings could be made more pleasant.

  “We can’t make them any bigger,” The Bodger said, “but at least we can make them a damn sight cleaner.”

  “Well that’s a start anyway. I can’t give you any more hands I’m afraid, but. . . .”

  “That’s all right, Jimmy. I don’t need ’em. I’m going to bear down on the ones I’ve got.”

  The Bodger began a series of lightning rushes along the messdecks. His visits, like those of a meteor, were unpredictable and shattering. Just as the messdeck sweepers were settling down to their second afternoon cup of tea, The Bodger would appear with Chief Petty Officer Marks, the Messdecks Chief. The messdeck sweepers, who regarded their job as a quiet number awarded for long service and good conduct, staggered under the impact. However, they had all met keen First Lieutenants before and they resolved to weather the storm, humouring the new Jimmy, until The Bodger’s first enthusiasm had evaporated. But The Bodger kept up his first pace and the messdeck sweepers realized, first with surprise and then with horror, that they had misjudged their man; this First Lieutenant’s first enthusiasm was not going to evaporate. The Bodger was at last gratified to hear the sounds of scrubbing whenever he passed a messdeck or a bathroom.

 
One morning The Bodger heard not only scrubbing, but Beethoven. The Bodger paused in his stride and looked inside the messdeck. Behind a row of lockers a tall young sailor was whistling while he scrubbed the bulkhead. He stopped and stood upright when he saw The Bodger.

  “This place is coming on quite a bit,” said The Bodger encouragingly.

  “Thank you, sir. But all I’m doing is picking up the odd pebble or two while the great ocean of dirt lies all untouched before me, sir.”

  “Eh?”

  “This place must have been designed to be uncomfortable and dirty, sir.”

  The Bodger sensed in this young stripling a spirit akin to his own.

  “The trouble is, sir, naval constructors don’t go to sea in the ships they design.”

  Now that The Bodger had found a kindred spirit his first impulse, paradoxically, was to crush it. The Bodger beetled his eyebrows.

  “You leave the design of the ship to those whose business it is,” he said crushingly, “and get on with the cleaning of it.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “I haven’t seen you before. What’s your name?”

  “Darnay, sir. Ordinary Seaman Darnay, sir. I’m normally a quartermaster, sir, but the proper messdeck dodger has gone sick. He says he’s overworked, sir.”

  The Bodger snorted. “A likely tale. Are you a National Serviceman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well let me give you a bit of advice before you go finding out how the other half lives. Don’t go bothering the other chap about his job in the Navy. Nine out of ten times it’s all he can do to find out about it himself without having to worry about you. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And incidentally, I may be wrong but I’m sure the second movement of the ‘Emperor’ is in G major.”

  The Bodger strode loftily away. That’s fixed him, he thought.

  “You ’eard,” said Chief Petty Officer Marks to Ordinary Seaman Darnay. “Pick up yore little pebble and get started on that ocean.”

  The bathroom next door belonged to the stokers and from it music was also coming, not a concerto but a simple country air, and its composer less likely to be Beethoven than Rabelais.