Good Enough For Nelson (20 page)

‘I’ve much enjoyed my day with you,’ he told Tremendous Mackenzie, as he said good-bye on the gangway. ‘It’s very reassuring to see the College keeping the old traditional standards up. I’m sure these darkies appreciate it. I know this lot did. In my last sea command, I always laid a lot of stress on doing things the old traditional way.’

Watching him, The Bodger felt more charitable towards Cassidy-Jones. The man obviously needed reassurance as much as anyone else. Plainly, he had been compensating for a lack of recent sea experience. The Bodger turned to shake Tremendous Mackenzie by the hand.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it turned out OK in the end.’

From forward, by the galley, Wilhelmina gave one short sharp bark. It was time for her supper.

‘Good girl,’
said Tremendous Mackenzie warmly.

Suddenly, an association of ideas, linking Tremendous Mackenzie, Cassidy-Jones, Wilhelmina and Irish coffee, struck The Bodger with such blinding force he felt momentarily dazed.

Tremendous Mackenzie said nothing. The Bodger pressed his hand. ‘I don’t want to know any more,’ he said. ‘Except, one large bottle of pills for Wilhelmina. Charge it to my mess- bill.’

‘Most naval officers,’ said The Bodger, ‘are mediocre. Like most other men, in most other professions. Mediocre men need a modicum of help, to get them through their careers. They haven’t the sheer native talent, so they must have something else. In the Navy that means the knack of being sociable. It means making small talk. Polite conversation. PC, as they used to call it. It’s all right for the great naval genius, the superb naturally gifted administrator, the natural leader of men in battle, it’s all right for him to be socially heavy-handed and not bother to make himself agreeable. But for the other ninety-nine point nine nine nine per cent of the rest of us, PC makes the world go round. PC lubricates life. All officers under training are to learn how to make PC.’

Without crudely announcing it in so many words, The Bodger effectively put PC on the College syllabus by instituting regular sherry parties on Sunday evenings before supper, in the main sitting room of the Captain’s House with Julia and himself presiding. Polly made out the invitations which in the case of OUTs were, at The Bodger’s insistence, formal cards requiring a formal answer. Polly worked steadily through the list of OUTs and everyone could expect a PC invitation once or perhaps even twice a term. Those who had distinguished themselves in any particular way during the week could expect an extra invitation for the following Sunday. Officers and lecturers, and their wives, were invited less formally and more often.

The sherry was always of a particular type which Purvis purchased by the gallon jar from some unnamed source down in the town. The Bodger called it Rich Tawny British Wine of a Sherry Character, but served by Purvis from decanters on silver trays, it was passable stuff, as everybody agreed, especially as it had some rarity value: it was to be encountered nowhere but at The Bodger’s PC parties and even there Purvis saw to it that nobody, but
nobody
, had more than two glasses.

Everybody who came to one of The Bodger’s PC evenings was expected to begin making PC to everybody else on arrival and to carry on making PC until he, or she, left. Sometimes, as The Bodger moved around amongst his guests, he overheard the PC taking some unexpected forms. A midshipman called Mellard was talking to Julia, and his opening gambit was so striking The Bodger lingered to hear more.

‘Well, there was this chap who had three balls,’ Mellard was saying, ‘which you must admit is pretty unusual.’

‘Yes it must be,’ Julia said.

Mellard, The Bodger could see, was an unusual young man, unselfconscious and unembarrassed. He enjoyed talking to older women, gaining a kind of sexual frisson from the contrast of his youth with them. But in spite of his blasé appearance, he was vulnerable to alcohol. As he had already told Julia, one sherry and I’m anybody’s. He had somehow circumvented the Purvis blockade and had had three sherries.

‘And this chap was p-pretty pleased with himself over the fact that he had three balls and he used to stop people in the street,
complete strangers
, in the street, and t-tell them about it. One day he stopped a bloke-have you heard this one?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Julia said.

‘Well, this fellow, that’s the fellow with three balls, said to the other fellow, the one he had just stopped, and he said, do you realise, he said, that between us we’ve got five balls? And the other chap looked at him in amazement and said...’ Mellard assumed a high shrieking falsetto voice. ‘... Blimey, mate, you must have a cluster! ‘

‘
Gracious
,’ said Julia. The Bodger moved on. Telling unsuitable stories to senior officers’ wives was part of growing up. The Bodger had done it himself, in his time.

Encouraged, Mellard said, ‘Have you heard the one about the chap who went to a fancy dress ball dressed up as a petrol pump?’

‘I believe I
have
, actually,’ Julia said, ‘So will you excuse me, please?’ Julia passed onwards, raising her eyebrows expressively at The Bodger as she went.

‘Oh sure,’ Mellard said, equably, already measuring the distance between himself and Purvis’s decanter and estimating his chances.

Lionel Tinkle despised The Bodger’s bourgeois PC evenings with all his heart and with all his soul. But, he had realised that Polly was regularly to be seen at them and he had let it be known, most casually, that he would not object to an invitation, some evening, some time, it did not matter when. After some twenty minutes’ careful manouevring, observed by Polly out of the corner of her eye, progressing towards her in a series of oblique slanting movements through the crush, he had arrived at her side.

‘Of course,’ he was saying, largely, about politics, ‘the Navy is based upon a fundamental anomaly. It’s almost comical, in a way. It postulates the use of force in a civilised manner. But that’s a contradiction in terms. You can’t apply force in a civilised manner! It’s not possible!’

‘That’s more or less what my father is always saying,’ said Polly.

Lionel Tinkle paused, disconcerted. ‘Was your father in the Navy?’

‘Oh yes, he was. Well, he still is. He’s an admiral.’

‘Serving?’

‘Oh yes, still serving.’

‘And he says the Navy is largely an anomaly?’ said Lionel Tinkle, incredulously.

’Goodness yes. He’s always going on about it. No thinking man would support the use of force in such a way for one minute, Daddy says. The moment I see that everybody else is genuinely giving it up and laying down their arms I’ll be only too happy to hang up me boots and retire, Daddy says. He say that only a lunatic would ever join the Navy anyway, and go to sea when he could stay at home and dig his garden instead. No wonder it was always the fool of the family who joined the Navy, Daddy says. You could have all night in, every night, sleep with your wife, see your children growing up, enjoy home cooking. Anyone who joins the Navy and misses all that needs his tiny bumps read, Daddy says.’

Lionel Tinkle swallowed his rich tawny wine so quickly it brought tears of real agony brimming to his eyes.

‘Quite apart from all that, Daddy says,’ Polly went on, ‘there’s all the
expense
. You could get mercenaries to do the same job and you wouldn’t even have to buy their weekly insurance stamps either, Daddy says.’

‘You couldn’t have gained an empire with mercenaries.’

‘Yes, you could. The Roman army was almost entirely mercenary. Anyway, Daddy always says the Empire was the daftest thing since mixed bathing. We could easily have traded with all those countries without making them into an empire. You don’t
have
to take over the shoe shop before you can buy and sell shoes, Daddy says.’

‘Ah well,’ said Lionel Tinkle, speaking very carefully, as though still hearing confusing noises ringing in his ears. ‘I wouldn’t exactly agree with that. Far be it from
me
to argue the case for imperialism ...’

‘Far be it indeed,’ murmured Polly.

‘Do you know, I really don’t know whether you’re pulling my leg or not?’

‘Ah well,’ said Polly.

‘Would you like to come and have a meal with me, now, this evening, after all this is over?’

‘Yes I would.’

‘Would you really?’

‘Yes I would.’

By some oversight on both their parts, Hilda and Seamus Rothesay were talking to each other.

‘Somebody was telling me you were an expert on pies?’ Hilda was saying, as though unsure herself that such an unlikely proposition could possibly be true. Before Seamus Rothesay, already becoming aware of a deep-seated misunderstanding, could say anything, Hilda went on, ‘I’ll tell you why I’m asking. I’m compiling this book of recipes, you see, from the College, to publish and sell for charity. There’s no reason why it should be recipes only from wives. Anybody can contribute. Do you have a special way of doing them?’

Seamus Rothesay considered briefly but quailed before the prospect of trying to ascend such an Eiger face of misapprehensions. But he had to say something, so he said, ‘You start on a series, you see.’

‘A series of ingredients, you mean?’

‘You could call them that, I suppose,’ said Seamus Rothesay hopelessly. ‘It’s a numerical progression of numbers. You arrange them in a special way, carrying on your calculation from one set to the next, modifying your estimate of the final result as you achieve more and more figures, approximating closer and closer to the final result...’ Seamus Rothesay’s voice trailed away.

‘Golly.’ Hilda had jerked her head back sharply, while briefly shutting her eyes. ‘It sounds a jolly complicated sort of recipe to me!’

Seamus Rothesay gently tried to make Hilda aware of her misunderstanding. ‘I remember once,’ he said, ‘telling a particularly dim cadet, those were in the days when we still had
cadets
here ...’

‘Yes I know what you mean by cadets,’ said Hilda sharply.

‘He quite brought the house down with one remark. I told him the common definition of Pi, greatly simplified of course, and he was
most
indignant. Trust the
Admiralty
, he said, trust the Admiralty to think of such a difficult number as that!’ Seamus Rothesay could still chuckle at the faint resonances remaining in his ancient, faded joke. Even Hilda was now aware of the misunderstanding, although she could not begin to grasp what it was.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, brusquely.

‘Of course,’ said Seamus Rothesay softly, ‘you must go and see a man about a menu.’

Soames was talking to Joyce, and trying to talk to somebody else.

‘Don’t you leave me, Alfred!’ Joyce gripped his arm, like a non-swimmer gripping a swimming pool rail. ‘With all these people.’

‘We’re supposed to talk to other people, Joyce. It’s part of it, don’t you see?’

‘Don’t you leave me!’

‘All right.’ They both looked at each other, silent, and angry. Lucy, in the manner of young women, had summed up all the young men there, and was talking to Isaiah Nine Smith.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘why did you cancel all the goings-on the moor that day?’

‘Why do you ask?’ said Isaiah Nine Smith, studying her long straight black hair, her beads, her rough wool sweater, her jeans tucked into calf-length shiny black boots.

‘Well, it didn’t match up to your stem, warlike image, in your dashing flying helmet descending out of the sky all the time.’

‘I’m surprised you noticed me.’

‘You were rather obvious. Ostentatious, almost. Was it anything to do with us being there?’

‘Good Heavens, no. Why were you there, anyway?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious, too. We were objecting to the use of a natural beauty spot for weapon training. We think it’s a kind of sacrilege.’

‘Well, for a start, it isn’t a natural beauty spot, it’s a bloody awful place and nobody in their right mind would go there from choice. But we have to train somewhere.’

‘Why?’

‘That helicopter you were so energetically trying to make go away, do you realise that was the same one that came back and rescued your chum? Don’t you think that’s a bit ironic?’

‘In a way, yes. But we wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for you and exercises.’

‘Talking of exercises, somebody was telling me you go in for yoga and Zen Buddhism and transcendental meditation and all that. Is that where they make you take up all sorts of strange positions?’

‘Sometimes. You still haven’t explained why you cancelled it all?’

‘I cancelled it because there comes a time when there is nothing to be gained by going on. There comes a time when you can see that everybody has had enough and more than enough.’

‘But surely, that’s what being in the Navy is all about, going on after everybody has had enough and more than enough?’

‘Who told you that?’ Isaiah Nine Smith’s face showed that he was hit, and hit hard.

‘My father. He was in the Navy. He wrote something like that in a letter to my mother once, before they were married. He died when I was two. And before you ask, my mother’s dead too. I’m the original orphan Annie. So why did you cancel it?’

‘God, you don’t let go, do you?
I
thought we’d made our point. The weather was foul and was getting worse. One chap had sprained his ankle quite badly and all the teams were having problems of various kinds. Even the staff, as it turns out, were having serious trouble. Did you ever have any experience of drugs?’ Desperately, Isaiah Nine Smith sought to change the subject. ‘Personally, I mean?’

‘I did try a few puffs of cannabis once, in somebody’s flat. I just felt a bit funny, that’s all.’

‘I just wondered, because we do lecture to the OUTs on drugs and I sometimes wonder whether what we say has any relation at all to what actually happens. I often suspect
they
ought to be lecturing
us
on drugs.’

‘I’m still curious about your motives in having these exercises out there. I can’t see what you hope to achieve. You know everybody’s fit, everybody’s always tremendously fit here. Why do you have to do it, and why do you have to do it on Dartmoor?”