We Saw The Sea

by John Winton

  “I saw it on a van at home once and I couldn’t imagine what it meant so I called my butler after it. Manweb is a judo expert. He could break your arm between his thumb and forefinger if he liked. I find him very useful to throw people out of my garden at this time of the year.”

  “Do you get much hooliganism during the festival?”

  “Oh no. Just a little quite innocent fornication.”

  The Bodger’s last mouthful of tea remained suspended in his' throat; his face contorted in a painful rictus of incredulity and shock.

  “It does spoil the flower-beds so. You’ll like Huang. I’ve asked him to give your ship’s company the more presentable virgins when you visit his palace on Saturday.”

  With difficulty, The Bodger disposed of the mouthful of tea which seemed to have lodged half-way down his throat for almost as long as The Bodger could remember.

  “That’s very kind of you, ma’am,” he said breathlessly.

  “I’ve always felt it quite wrong that English girls should be expected to be virgins when they marry. It puts them at a disadvantage from the very start. The girls here serve an apprenticeship in the temple first. For most of them it’s their only way of saving up for their dowry. I’m sure Julia would agree with me.”

  The Bodger blushed a deep consuming red.

  “Good heavens, I’m embarrassing you, boy.”

  “Oh, not at all, ma’am.” The Bodger struggled to change the subject; there was no knowing what detail this woman would go into next. “The tea is rather hot. I suppose it’s the local growth?”

  “Nonsense, it’s Joe Lyons’ Don’t let that old humbug of a Consul persuade you that the tea they grow here is better. I get it by the bushel from England and Manweb treads it out with his feet.”

  “We’re giving a cocktail party on board tonight. I wonder if you would care to come as my guest, ma’am?”

  “I should be delighted, Robert! What time?”

  “Half-past six. There will be boats from Huang Steps.”

  “It’s years since I went to a party on board a ship! Oh, certainly I shall come! How very kind of you to invite me.” Miss Several-Strickland pursed her lips and closed her eyes reminiscently and The Bodger had the lunatic thought that perhaps the last wardroom cocktail party Miss Several-Strickland attended had been given by Captain Cook.

  The old lady opened her eyes. “Do you still drink gin in the Navy?”

  “The old brigade do. Most of the younger generation drink Horse’s Necks.”

  “Horse’s Necksl “

  “It’s brandy and ginger ale, ma’am.”

  “Strange service, the Navy. I’m told they pay you more now. That’s a bad thing. Officers in the services should be able to support themselves. They should have a substantial stake in the country. The people of England haven’t forgotten Cromwell’s Model Army.”

  Miss Several-Strickland looked pointedly at a small ormolu clock by her chair. The Bodger rose to his feet. Miss Several-Strickland accompanied him back to the elephant.

  “Be careful of the local liquor, Robert,” she called, as The Bodger swayed down the path on the First Elephant’s back. “Huang’s got a head like rock, like his father, but he forgets that not everybody else has.”

  The Bodger began to warm towards Huang; he sounded like a first rate fellow.

  When The Bodger returned to Carousel the first boatload of libertymen were being laid out in rows along the upper-deck. The two junior doctors, Hamish Maclean and Alastair Campbell, with stethoscopes and stomach pump, were examining the corpse-like figures.

  “Jings,” Hamish said to The Bodger, “they’ve all been drinking Mickey Finns. There was only one could speak and he said he had one pint of the liquor ashore and remembered no more.”

  The Bodger looked along the line of unconscious faces. He noticed that the line included representatives from most of the messes in the ship. Royal Marines, stokers, electricians and cooks lay next to each other in happy alcoholic abandon. “Here’s the Chief Steward. He probably hasn’t come off shore drunk since he was a boy. Look at him. Like a baby. Mike Hobbes was the Officer of the Watch and he says he’s never seen a quieter boatload in his life.”

  “Oh well,” said The Bodger. “We’ll get our own back tonight.”

  Carousel’s cocktail party was attended by Huang himself and by the polite society of the city. It was the most oddly-assorted company ever to gather on Carousel’s quarter-deck and the party was the biggest social occasion in Dhon Phon Huang since the consumption of the forty missionaries, nearly a hundred years before.

  “They still talk about that,” said Miss Several-Strickland, who was wearing a hat which made the gangway staff feel that their day had not passed unrewarded. “ ‘Missionary’ means ‘very tasty’ here, although its been corrupted to ‘Yummaree’. To a Dhonese, ‘Yummaree’ means anything splendid, or enjoyable, or worth waiting for. Let me point out some of the local celebrities for you, Robert. That woman in the dreadful hat and the bangles over her breasts is the mistress of the deportment school for the temple girls. And that funny little man with the sad face is Huang’s Prime Minister. He wanted to be a farmer, poor man, but his family have always been Prime Minister so he had to be. There’s Huang himself at the end. Such a handsome boy. . . .”

  Huang was talking to the Captain and the British Consul through the Interpreter. His dark eyes looked out over the guests and to the shore as though he could see the endless plains over which his forbears had galloped with the sun on their backs and the cloak of Genghis Khan in front. He wore a long red silk robe and held a Horse’s Neck in one hand. With the other he fondled the hair of a naked Dhonese girl. He said very little but concentrated upon the drinks. A steward stood with a tray which Huang steadily, as the party progressed, emptied. The Captain and the British Consul stopped their conversation to watch him, in awe. Huang finished the tray and his feet were still as firmly planted upon the quarter-deck and his eyes as levelly fixed on an empty horizon.

  Meanwhile, Ginger Piggant entertained the mistress of the temple deportment school and the Commander consoled the Prime Minister. Executioners with bared swords stood at intervals round the quarter-deck. “Slow drinker--zut! ” said the Navigating Officer to the Dhonese Pilot.

  10

  New Year was the most important festival in the Dhonese calendar and the Dhonese set themselves to enjoy it with a single-mindedness which would have made a feasting Roman emperor pensive. The rules of Saturnalia held sway, no man could be punished and no woman was unapproachable. Maidens who had resisted all year gave way in a single night. The temple girls did a brisk trade. Fireworks seared the sky every night and the streets were bright with flaring torches. Processions of dragons, masked men and dancers threaded the narrow streets of the city, kites with long streaming tails flew above Huang’s palace and young men and girls danced to the throbbing of gongs, drums and cymbals. Carousel’s sailors watched the festivities with goggling eyes, finished their drinks and, led by Number One Boy’s nephews, joined in.

  A full programme had been arranged. Carousel’s Royal Marine Band beat the retreat on Huang Steps in spite of an unseasonable cloudburst. The ceremony brought tears of nostalgia to Miss Several-Strickland’s eyes, and was respectfully reviewed in the Dhonese press the next morning as a rain-making rite of supernatural efficiency. The ship’s football team were soundly beaten by a team of Huang’s executioners in a game which lasted nearly five hours, a banquet of fried chicken and rice wine being served at half-time in the Prime Minister’s house which was over two miles from the ground. The boxing team, however, beat Huang’s boxers by eight fights to nil, Huang’s boxers being, in their opinion, unfairly handicapped by being forbidden to use their feet. The ship was open to visitors every afternoon. Everything movable was locked up or lashed down and the denuded decks were crowded with curious Dhonese fingering the sailors’ uniforms and exclaiming at the guns.

  On the third day the Commander organized a children’s party
in the traditional manner. It was the first children’s party in Dhon Phon Huang’s history, and it passed into the city’s mythology. Hordes of screaming children swooped down the slides on to the quarter-deck, and rode on saddles fixed to the gun barrels. Small boys enthusiastically punched the midriff of an inflated diver’s suit while the Chief G.I., hidden behind the bulkhead with a microphone, made groaning noises. The ship’s company dressed up as pirates and presided over the sideshows, served tea, and separated knots of struggling small boys.

  “Just look at ’em, sir,” said the Master at Arms breathlessly to The Bodger from beneath his layer of grease paint and his eye patch. “Kids is just the same all over the world.” Miss Several-Strickland told The Bodger afterwards that Carousel's party for the poorer children of the city had more effect on Huang’s foreign policy than the whole weight of an army division supported by the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

  The climax of Carousel’s visit was a banquet given by Huang himself. Huang’s performance at Carousel’s cocktail party and their own experiences ashore had made Carousel’s ship’s company cautious. The ship appreciated that this would be no banquet for weaklings. The Bodger gave the selection of the wardroom party his personal supervision.

  “We’ve got Commander (E) and Commander (L),” he told the Commander. “Myself, Pilot, Guns, Slim, Broad, Scratch, Mr Pebblethwaite, the two Docs and Eric. And Ginger’s selecting a team of plumbers.”

  “God,” said the Commander, “that’s certainly the first eleven. If Huang manages to knock out that lot, we’ll give up and join the Toc H.”

  “Pity you can’t come, Jimmy. I’ve a feeling this will be your sort of run ashore.”

  “No, I’ve got to stay on board if the Old Man’s going ashore. I’m very surprised he’s going, actually. You know what he’s like about the Yellow Peril. He and Commander (L) have given Western civilization ten years at the outside.”

  “I didn’t know El-san was a Yellow Peril fan.”

  “Rabid,” said the Commander.

  The ship’s company were also taking Huang’s banquet seriously. The Master at Arms drew up the list himself. The Chief Petty Officers and E.R.A.s messes were included almost to a man, the Royal Marine barracks provided a strong contingent and the Master at Arms hand-picked the remainder from the ship’s defaulters’ lists. The Captain himself led the party which, when mustered on the jetty, was the most formidable expedition the ship had ever put ashore on a single evening.

  The banquet party were profoundly impressed by Huang’s palace.

  The palace gates were of bronze wrought into intricate designs of dragons, horses and elephants. The dragons’ eyes were blood red rubies and the elephants’ tusks were of inlaid ivory. The gates were flung open as Carousel’s party advanced and the Prime Minister stood waiting to welcome his master’s guests.

  The Prime Minister led the way along a paved path between fountains and flowering magnolia trees. Lanterns hung in the branches and servants stood with torches to light the way.

  “Good heavens,” said Commander (L), “this man’s quite civilized.”

  Huang’s dining hall was under the great golden dome the Captain had seen from the ship. It was a vast apartment floored in marble with mosaics set in the walls. Latticed windows opened on to the garden and the music of plucked strings floated out from a small gallery in one wall. Cushions were placed for the guests and the walls were lined with serving girls.

  Commander (L) was interested in the mosaics.

  “I wonder what they’re doing as far east as this?” he said to Commander (E). He examined the nearest mosaic appreciatively and the girl standing under it was flattered. She smiled and wriggled her hips. But Commander (L) was quite oblivious of her.

  “Strange to see them here. They look almost Greek. Or Persian perhaps.” The girl smiled delightedly. “I must have a closer look later on.”

  The ship’s company were also intrigued by the mosaics.

  “Cor,” said Able Seaman Golightly hoarsely, “look at ’eml Better than --- Pompei!”

  The Captain sat on Huang’s right hand with the officers on either side of them. The Bodger sat next to the Prime Minister and the ship’s company ranged themselves in a huge circle round the hall. The meal began.

  Huang’s banquets were on an Olympian scale. Each guest had a whole chicken and large bowl of rice wine to himself. The carcass of an animal the size of an ox was brought in steaming and reeking on a spit, and was placed in the middle of the floor. An executioner with bared sword stood ready to carve.

  “Oh God, I bet I get the eye,” The Bodger muttered.

  The Prime Minister awoke from the trance of apparently fathomless gloom in which he had been sitting and called to the executioner. The executioner nodded and, with a lightning lunge and twist, carved out the nearest eye and brought it, still smoking, on the end of his sword and offered it to The Bodger.

  The Bodger looked at the terrible eye glaring at him from the end of the sword and felt his stomach make a complete revolution. But smiling delightedly, The Bodger accepted the ghastly eye and carried it towards his mouth. As he did so, he squeezed the eye like an orange pip. The eye soared over The Bodger’s shoulder and out of the nearest window, while The Bodger put his hand in his mouth and munched ostentatiously, nodding and smiling, as though his evening had just been made complete.

  “Bravo Bodger,” breathed the Captain, who had been watching surreptitiously, with his heart in his mouth.

  The drinking bowls were filled and Huang caught the Captain’s eye. The Captain at last recognized the vaguely familiar tune the band were playing. The company rose for the Loyal Toast. Huang, obviously feeling that the occasion called for some added comment, spoke to the Interpreter, sitting behind him.

  “Lord Huang say ‘Cheers’,” said the Interpreter.

  The Captain inclined his head in acknowledgement.

  “Tell Lord Huang ‘Cheers’ to him too,” he said gravely.

  The message was translated for Huang who was delighted and ordered the bowls to be refilled. Huang drained his own bowl and spoke again.

  “Lord Huang say ‘This wine made in his grandfather's time’.”

  “Tell Lord Huang it’s very good.”

  “Lord Huang say ‘Because of this wine his grandfather have four hundred children’.”

  “Tell Lord Huang congratulations.”

  Huang beamed and ordered the bowls to be refilled. Mellowed by food and by quarts of rice wine served by shapely serving girls, Carousel's sailors began to warm up. The roar of conversation was interrupted by feminine squeals and shrieks. A girl broke away from clutching arms and ran giggling out of the hall. The Captain looked anxious but Huang was pleased and ordered that sailor’s bowl to be refilled. The Captain thought it time to talk of diplomacy. He had been fully briefed by the Chief of Staff in Hong Kong.

  “The usual sort of line, Dickie,” said the Chief of Staff. “Give him a few words about Anglo-Dhonese solidarity, S.E.A.T.O., and a bit about the U.S. Seventh Fleet. You know the usual sort of guff as well as I do. You might talk about imperialism, balance of power, White Man’s Grave and all that. Wogs love talking about White Man’s Grave. It may not do any good but at least it won’t do any harm. You know the sort of thing. Just give him the idea that we’re all right with him, on his side, so that if he cares to put something up to the United Nations he might, in five years’ time, get a printed circular about when the bar opens and all that. But for heaven’s sake don’t sign anything. We’re still sorting out the mess left by one of your predecessors who went to a party in Macao and exchanged the whole Eighth Destroyer Flotilla for five per cent of the year’s opium takings. The trouble is,” the Chief of Staff had said mournfully, “that it would have been a bloody good bargain for Their Lordships.”

  The Captain took a long draught from his bowl and opened diplomatic relations; he was conscious that he was upholding a long tradition. The Royal Navy has influenced the foreign policy of the country
for centuries.

  “Tell Lord Huang the British are very happy to be here and to be welcomed to Dhon Phon Huang. We hope that this visit will be the first of many and that Dhon Phon Huang will not feel isolated in the middle of unfriendly countries.”

  In styling himself “Interpreter” the Dhonese who acted in that capacity for Huang had exaggerated his own talents. He was capable of translating an exchange of simple courtesies and greetings. A high-level diplomatic conference, however, was beyond him. But the Interpreter was frightened of losing face with his master, who was already waiting for enlightenment. The Interpreter did his best.

  “Lord Huang is pleased you like Dhonese girls.”

  The Captain tried again.

  “My government is anxious to reassure you that they have Dhon Phon Huang’s position very close to their hearts. Can I inform them when I return that Lord Huang feels friendly towards the British Government?”

  Huang was watching the Captain with curiosity; it seemed strange to him that this Englishman should trouble to raise a subject which Huang took for granted.

  “Lord Huang say ‘Not to worry. He himself will choose girl for you’.”

  “Perhaps you have had delegations from other countries? I have no power as far as politics go but anything I may say will have an influence on affairs in London.”

  Huang frowned while the Captain’s words were translated. Then his brow cleared and he looked at the Captain with respect; his grandfather had once told him about the English qualities of Empire building and founding settlements.

  “Lord Huang say he is very sorry not to know strength of British sea captain. He will choose two girls!”

  The Captain gave it up. (Later, when the Chief of Staff asked how it went, the Captain thought over his conversation with Huang and said: “Oh, they’re pro-British all right.”)

  Huang, too, had tired of diplomacy. He clapped his hands and a team of acrobats wearing baggy trousers, like Cossacks, tumbled out on to the floor.