Owning Up: The Trilogy (53 page)

‘These men, they cheat hanyone – even Spanish peoples. A friend hof mine meet a man. He say: “Hi ham the gardener hof the Bishop hof Seville. Hi sell you some seeds hof the most beautiful carnations hin the world.” My friend buy them, he plant them and hup come not one carnation! Just hay lot hof dirty grass!!!’

I didn’t even try to find an anti-Fascist moral in this one.

After lunch we climbed into the buses for the long drive back. After Jerez it grew darker. We finished the brandy. Felix and I chatted quietly as the bus drove on. The last light died on the hills. We crossed the border and parted on the quay. We swore that if, after our demob, there was an uprising we would go and fight. We were not to be put to the test, of course. Franco died in 1975 in the same hospital as a man dreadfully tortured by his police.

At noon next day I watched the
Dido
steam past with some envy and irritation. It was en route for Casablanca, which to me, as a lover of Bogart films, was sacred ground. We, on the other hand, were bound for Madeira. It took two days and, as the harbour wasn’t big enough to accommodate a battleship, we anchored some distance off shore. On arrival little boats, manned by bare-footed Portuguese of piratical appearance, rowed out to barter wicker furniture and needle-boxes, and stalks of green bananas, a fruit unseen in England since the second year of the war. The ship’s Tannoy warned us that trading was forbidden, but gazing over the side I could see jerseys and seaboots furtively passing out through the portholes of the Lower Deck. It was a cold day and the boys who dived for pennies hugged their bronzed bodies and shivered.

Tom went ashore the next day but I decided not to. By morning a ground swell had arisen and didn’t die down until the day before we left. There was no leave as it was too rough for the liberty boats and so I never got ashore at all, whereas Tom was stranded for three happy days and crowed about it non-stop on his return. Our relationship had by now soured into almost continuous bickering and was never really to recover for more than an hour or two at a time.

We sailed for Portland, the first few days in hot sun with everybody off duty sunbathing on the deck. While we’d been away England had experienced one of the coldest winters of the century and as we approached the Channel it was back to heavy sea jerseys under the cold grey skies. Despite the weather I was in high spirits. In three days Tom and I were to return to the
Dido.
It’s true I had fourteen days’ stoppage of leave for losing my paybook but, as I’d hoped, when we were transferred the RPO scribbled out the punishment. I rushed happily away to find the Baron, Edward Wood, Felix and the ‘orrible Peter Ward, all very friendly and larger than life on the dear little ship. The next day we were sailing back to Chatham and, in a fortnight’s time, leave. Nothing.could spoil my pleasure, but one unfriendly eye was watching me, determined to do its best. Warrant Officer Perkins was biding his time.

12

Warrant Officer Perkins’ first opportunity wasn’t long in coming although in the event he muffed it, a setback that made him all the more determined. I had assiduously cultivated an artistic reputation on the
Dido,
sitting on the deck sketching the harbour, or going ashore with sketchbooks and paints to turn out fairly competent if completely unoriginal gouaches of wherever we happened to be. My motivation was not entirely affected, I genuinely enjoyed sketching, but I discovered that there were side-advantages too. Any job which required some painting skill, ship’s posters for example, fell my way. There was the time too when the British Council (there was as yet no Arts Council) sent to the
Dido,
for the edification of the boy seamen who were expected to be given a certain amount of general education, a series of large boards on which were photographs and reproductions comparing African sculpture with Cubist painting. There were some notes provided but this somewhat esoteric subject was not part of the Schoolie’s armoury and, having satisfied the Commander as to my competence, I spent a pleasant afternoon while everybody else was on deck doing something freezing and boring,.explaining to the admittedly indifferent boy seamen (including the one with skin like a ward-room plate) how the masks and fetishes of the Ivory Coast and the French Congo were more important than Cezanne in the development of Braque and Picasso, a theory I had assimilated from ELT Mesens.

When we arrived at Chatham the Captain decided to hold a cocktail party for the senior officers of the Home Fleet on their return from the Mediterranean cruise. The Commander suggested L be commissioned to paint a large mural to hang between the guns on the Quarter Deck and I proposed a mock early sea map, with mermaids and monsters and humorous illustrations of the places we’d visited. This was accepted and for several days I toiled pleasantly at the work. On Gibraltar I placed the three wise monkeys wearing naval officers’ caps and at Villefranche sailors and tarts (the Commander asked me to move the position of one of the matelot’s hands). It was finished in time and hung in its place looking, I had to admit, quite decorative. It was something of a success, a talking-point, and, when the party had been going on for some time and a great deal of gin been taken, I was sent for by the proud Commander and made much of. I was also given far too much to drink and by the time I staggered down to the Mess Deck, my first optimistic reaction to the alcoholic excess had turned lachrymose and revolutionary. It was past Lights Out but I was determined to persuade my grumbling shipmates that the triumph of Anarchism was overdue. Standing on a mess table and speaking, for some incomprehensible reason, in a strong German accent, I appealed for them to shed their chains. The noise I was making attracted the attention of my enemy and he came below to find out who was responsible. Luckily another stage was imminent. Revolutionary fervour was about to yield to nausea. Hanging on to one of the bars from which we slung our hammocks I was sick mostly over his shoes. He grinned like a wolf; I could see his features clearly in between the waves of approaching unconsciousness.

‘Leading Seaman,’ he said with deceptive mildness, ‘this man is drunk and I hold you responsible. He’s on a charge and you too for neglecting your duty. See the mess is cleared up immediately.’

The Leading Seaman said he would do as ordered but, if he might be allowed to say so, he felt it inadvisable. Perkins coloured and told him, with menacing calm, to explain himself. The Leading Seaman did so – undeniably drunk, but made so by the Upper Deck – case likely to be dismissed – mural for cocktail party – hardly likely to make it stick.

The Warrant Officer thought it over, and decided to fight another day. As he left the Mess Deck, I collapsed and was put into my hammock by the Leading Seaman and a very diverted Baron. I woke with no remembrance of any of this but was told about it at breakfast.

‘Watch out for that Mongolian shirt Perkins,’ advised the Baron. ‘He’s a right bastard and anyway he’s out for your fucking blood now.’

Perkins said nothing more about the incident. I passed him at stand easy in the recreation space and he didn’t seem to see me at all. I had no further trouble from him before I went home for Easter leave.

In the middle of my leave the King of Denmark died and we were recalled, as the
Dido
had been chosen to represent the Fleet, and to carry across an elderly Admiral and a marine band which was going to play in the funeral procession. The admiral seemed quite a cheery old gentleman, who promenaded the ship most of the day, acknowledging our salutes with bluff panache. Felix, however (and after all he had an inside knowledge of Admirals), thought he’d be a bit of a bastard if crossed and we were indeed warned to creep about the ship in the early morning for fear of waking him.

We arrived at Copenhagen at dusk and made fast to the jetty, watched by a large crowd. I was very surprised by how alike the Danes looked: to my eyes they seemed almost as interchangeable as a similar gathering of Chinese. Only one young man stuck out from the rest and he turned out to be a Geordie who had settled there and was soon exchanging what were undoubtedly obscene, but to my ears impenetrable, pleasantries with two stokers from his native Newcastle who were leaning on the gang-rail.

Scrubbing decks early next morning (as quietly as possibly for fear of disturbing the Admiral) I could see rather more of the place. We were quite close to that banal little mermaid, but on the quay was a statue of a polar bear with two cubs which had a certain kitsch charm. The Baron however didn’t think much of it. ‘Fuck a bear with birdshit all over its swede,’ he said dismissively, and indeed it was almost white with the droppings of the great flocks of pigeons which, rather than the gulls, seemed to have commandeered the dockyard.

Stand easy produced a surprise. Instead of the usual meagre biscuits or soggy fruit cake, there was tray upon tray of Danish pastries and cakes bursting with real cream. How can this be, I asked myself, as I wolfed down a second plate from the kiosk in the recreation space. Denmark was occupied and we weren’t, and yet, only a year after the end of the war, they’ve got all the cream cakes they want and we’ve still got butter rationing. It was a question we were to ask ourselves for several years to come.

That afternoon Felix and Edward were on duty and I was so irritated with Tom that I refused to go ashore with him. I asked another rating, an engaging fellow with a weakness for the ballet, and, as he had a date at seven that evening, arranged to meet the Baron at a typical rendezvous – ‘Outside the baronial lavatory in the main square at seven o’clock for “big eats”.’

The city was cleaner than any I’d encountered before and had dealt with mourning its late King with a certain commercial astuteness. In the window of a parfumerie was a single large white bottle of scent with a black bow round its neck and, in a very chic couturier, a solitary black hat acknowledging the respects of an unaccompanied black shoe.

We went to a modern art show of young Danish painters, very Expressionist, messy and derivative, but I managed to see some paintings by Munch, whom Edouard had described as ‘the van Gogh of the North’. Then we drank Schnapps, which I’d never tried before and found quite extraordinary, exploding like a warm but lethal jellyfish at the back of the nose.

At seven the balletomane went to meet his date, and, rather louchely, I took up my station outside the gents. It was indeed baronial by contemporary British standards, clinically clean and extremely large with its own cloakroom and shoe-shine parlour. As the Baron hadn’t shown up by 7.30pm I decided to give up and went into one of the smarter restaurants for dinner. I ordered fish with a rich sauce, half a duck, an ice, and cheese and biscuits. Halfway through the Gargantuan meal I saw the Baron wandering past and ran out to fetch him in. Had I known how drunk he was I’d have hesitated and indeed his carry-on over the next hour will explain why Felix and my other friends refused to go ashore with him.

Explaining that he had spent the afternoon asleep in a park, a statement confirmed by the mud and grass all over his person, he yelled ‘Shirt’ at the waiter and ordered the duck. This was some time coming but it didn’t worry the Baron. First he grabbed a piece of fish that someone had left on his plate at the next table and then, realising that his behaviour was causing a bad impression with the solid Danish families around us, aggravated the offence by explaining to me very loudly and at some length that they had all, without exception, played with themselves when young. At last the duck arrived and the Baron, having jabbed at it once or twice with a fork, picked it up in both hands and gnawed at it with uninhibited and noisy satisfaction.

As most of the Danes understand English rather well and the Baron in between his shark-like assaults on the duck’s carcass continued to accuse them of ‘interfering with themselves’, a linguis tic variation on his previous assertion but no less insulting, I was very relieved when the ‘Shirt’ was summoned and the bill assertively demanded and reluctantly settled.

We walked out without any major disaster and were accosted by an extraordinary-looking child with a grotesquely large head covered with thick golden curls, who offered to lead us to a bar, where Bing and Bong provided the music. Here we got stuck into litres of ice-cold lager and I began to catch the Baron up. At his suggestion I bought a rose from an itinerant flower-seller and presented it to a girl on the other side of the room telling her, with tedious and repetitive gallantry, that she was the Mona Lisa of the twentieth century.

Drink had unloosed the Baron’s id and that same beast which had thrown the boiling water over my feet came lumbering out. The Baron produced a dagger and said he wanted to stab somebody. He left the café and I nervously followed him, although how I could have frustrated his murderous intentions if he had persisted I can in no way imagine, unless it was by drawing them on myself. Happily his mood changed again and, after eating several sandwiches from a slot machine, a source of nourishment unknown to me until then, we fell into several other bars and, although the Baron got drunker and drunker, there was no recurrence of his psychotic aspect.

Somewhere I conducted a small orchestra with a bread knife. They were playing
The Flower Waltz.
Somewhere I danced with a girl with a most un-Danish-like complaint – BO. The Baron made friends with a very small American sailor with bright red hair and no chin. They sat together with their arms round each other’s necks, spilling their beer and moaning about their respective navies. Eventually I found myself drunkenly propositioning the Mona Lisa of the twentieth century, who had mysteriously reappeared – or was it that we had returned to the original bar, the domain of Bing and Bong? She rejected my advances most gently.

‘You are reminding me,’ she told me in her sing-song Danish accent, ‘of a gay rabbit’ – a simile rather more accurate than she was perhaps aware.

Earlier that day I had bought a large-Danish Blue cheese and, unexpectedly, hadn’t left it anywhere. It may seem strange to the contemporary reader that I should have bought it at all; today Danish Blue is a despised comestible, a sure sign of a provincially unimaginative and usually impoverished cheese board, but in wartime Britain and for some years after there was only one kind of cheese, a sweating and flavourless soap known officially as ‘Cheddar’ and more generally as ‘mousetrap’. I knew therefore that there was little I could take home that would please my family more than a large Danish Blue, creamy and veined within its rough-cast protective rind. It was the thought of my father’s delight that kept me in possession of the cheese throughout that long, drunken, peripatetic evening, but as the Baron now declared his intention of slinging his mick and crashing the baronial swede, I decided to accompany him back to the ship and leave the cheese in its box on the gangway in charge of the guard.