Pacific Interlude (12 page)

“Yard procedures are international. The officers of a ship should keep the hell away from yard workmen. If they have complaints, they should go to their captain and he should go to the superintendent. What I am trying to say is, keep that little bastard Simpson off the backs of my men. They can't work with him looking over their shoulder and yelling at them.”

Syl smiled.

“Thank you for making that all perfectly clear. Shall we now talk about bad welding?”

“I've inspected that job myself and I find it is adequate for the purpose. We were not told to refinish a yacht, but to rush a tanker back into operation.”

“She's still an army ship and the United States government is not used to operating vessels that look like they've been put together like a patchwork quilt. Tell your men to shape up. I don't have time to argue with you. When the work is done, I'll inspect it and send a report to my headquarters. Meanwhile, don't send me messages to come see you here.
Our
custom is for the yard superintendent to see the captain aboard his vessel.”

Syl had no idea whether this was true, but his anger and frustration needed some outlet. When he returned to his cabin he tactfully as possible told Simpson to stay away from the yard workmen. The executive officer's thin face flushed again, and his pale blue eyes flashed anger through his steel-framed spectacles. “Aye, aye, sir. Anything you say,
sir.”

So far this day Syl had a perfect score of making all human relations worse. A chipping hammer seemed to be aimed directly into his right ear. He wanted to go ashore and forget the
Y-18
, but the problem of the officers and men coming aboard whenever they damned well pleased had to be handled.

The lack of a private cabin for the ship's captain was a real problem—even the smallest Coast Guard cutters provided that. Simpson continued to shuffle papers on the desk. There was no solitude aboard this ship. How long would he have to put up with this … One year? Two? He could go crazy.

In a sense he realized that the question itself was optimistic—assuming as it did that the ship would survive that long. The thought of a quick death flashed into Syl's mind, and was met by a flash-memory of Angel with only a towel draped around her waist. He had succeeded in not thinking about her for almost an hour, and the realization that he would not see her again made him feel sick to his stomach. He lay down on his bunk, turned his face away from Simpson and closed his eyes. Calm down … what had last night meant anyway? There was no point in being so damned worked up about it. He'd met a good-looking girl who was good in bed. What would have happened if she had not gone back to her “regular chap”? How long would all that excitement and exhilaration have lasted?

Nevermind, he wished like hell he had had a chance to find out. When Simpson went on deck, Syl sat down at the desk and began to look for his checklist. He found it under a blotter on the desk. But while rifling through a drawer for a pen he discovered a snapshot under the wrinkled shelf paper which covered its bottom. It was a picture of a smiling, middle-aged woman sitting up nude in a bed, her groin covered by a sheet, her ample breasts uplifted as she leaned back on a pillow, her hands folded behind her head. Somebody's wife or somebody's girl …Could it be Simpson's? More likely it had belonged to Carlson, the skipper who had been killed. This sweet face, which looked so anxious to please, did not resemble the sour countenance in the photograph of Simpson's wife over his bunk. Turning the snapshot over, Syl read the words, “Forget-me-not.”

While he was turning that one over Simpson returned.

“Do you know anything about this?” Syl said.

Simpson peered at the photo and quickly glanced away.

“It's sure not mine.”

Syl carried the snapshot to the sink, where he touched a match to it and held it by a corner, thinking of the blaze which had consumed the woman's husband or lover. Maybe this was the appropriate finishing touch.

His head still ached from the night before and he felt a little dizzy, as though his hangover was getting worse. Lying down in his bunk, he fell into a deep sleep. It had to be. To keep out the surrounding din.

He was awakened more than two hours later by the arrival of Buller, who looked bleary-eyed but sounded jovial as ever. He was wearing his white cowboy hat on the back of his head. Striding into the cabin without knocking, he approached Simpson, who was working at the desk. “Good morning, Simp!” he said, “You missed one hell of a good party last night—”

“Don't call me
‘Simp
.' I worked twenty years for a commission and the right to be called Mister.”

“Sorry about that, Mister. I just thought it was time for us all to get a little friendly around here.”

Syl rolled from his bunk and sat on the edge of it, rubbing his face.

“Mr. Simpson,” he said, “maybe you better go and let me have a little talk with Mr. Buller.”

“Glad to,” Simpson said.

“Where in hell did you go last night, skipper?” Buller said when Simpson had gone.

“I met a lady who took me on a drive around the city.”

“You should have stuck around. The party just got rolling around ten o'clock. A lot of new broads came in. I think even old Wydanski got laid.”

“Good for him,” Syl said. The thought of the venerable white-haired engineer with a girl somehow reassured him.

“If he didn't, it was his own fault. Somewhere around two in the morning he went off somewhere with a nice little nurse. Has he showed up here since?”

“I haven't seen him. Have the rest of the men come back to the ship yet?”

“I brought them back in the truck. They're holding their heads but happy all the way.”

“Good. There's work to do here. The interior painting and engine work are up to us. We're going to have to make sure that all officers and men report aboard before eight o'clock every morning.”

“That's okay with me, but if you want me to get all those supplies on the list, I'm going to have to run around town a lot.”

“Nonetheless, you and everyone else, including me, check in here every morning before eight. And one more thing. Some customs that may seem silly as shit to you were devised to let men live in close quarters aboard small ships for long periods of time. A few formalities have to be observed. Call an officer Mister with his last name, deep six nicknames. Enlisted men are called by their last names.”

“Why can't we just act natural—?”

“There's nothing
natural
about life aboard a ship. You've seen that. The rules were designed to help men to get on with one another.”

“It all sounds like bullshit to me, but I'll try if you want.”

“I want. And while we're on the subject, please don't wear that hat aboard ship. We ask the enlisted men to stay in uniform, like it or not, the officers have to set an example—”

“Skipper, this ain't a battleship. Why not let all the men wear whatever kind of hat they want? A little individuality would be good for morale—”

“Let's forget it, Mr. Buller. Stow the damn hat. And I suggest you check with Mr. Simpson to see what supplies we need first.”

“Aye, aye,
sir
,” Buller said, jumping to his feet. “I say that right?”

Syl ignored him. He wanted a cup of coffee. The galley range must be in operation now that the tanks had been steamed. He went to the wardroom and found Wydanski hunched over a mug, pale, tired but clear eyed.

“Good morning, Mr. Wydanski.” Syl reached for a mug on a shelf.

“I guess it's afternoon, isn't it, skipper?” Wydanski said, sounding out of it.

“Just about. How's the work in the engine room coming?”

“There's not a hell of a lot we can do except wait for spare parts. The boys are cleaning it up, fixing what they can.”

“Now we've all had a chance to blow off steam, I think we're all going to have to start getting aboard before eight in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. How long do you think we'll be in Brisbane?”

“It's hard to tell. Not as long as I first thought. The yard is working around the clock.”

“Do you think we'll have two weeks more?”

“Maybe about that.”

“Is there any way I can get my pay here? I have two months of it coming to me. My records got all fouled up.”

“There's a problem—there's no pay office for us here. We have a big ship's welfare fund now, though, and I'm going to authorize paying from that.”

“I'd be grateful, sir. I'm getting pretty low.”

“Mr. Buller is in charge of the welfare fund. See him about it.”

“Skipper, I want to thank you for getting that house, the welfare fund, everything. This is a pretty awful little ship, but you're keeping the morale of the men high.”

“The house was Mr. Buller's idea.”

“It was a good one, skipper. Brisbane's a great town.”

He was lucky, Syl thought. Apparently
his
girl hadn't yet gone back to her regular chap.

Buller had succeeded in bringing fresh food to the ship. Lunch that day included hamburgers and ice cream, almost forgotten delights. Afterward the men began sanding down the interior bulkheads in the officers' staterooms and in the forecastle. The dust and noise added to the din of men hammering on the outside of the hull were almost intolerable.

At five that afternoon Buller said, “The cook's going to get meals aboard for the duty section, but I've got plenty of girls to cook for us at the house. Do you want to join us for dinner?”

What the hell, Syl thought, it beat wandering the streets or touring the bars again. He went back to the house with Buller for dinner with the men, and it looked as though the party of the night before had never stopped. The laughter of the young women who sat around drinking and eating, before paying off with a few minutes on the soiled mattresses scattered through the rooms, grated on his nerves.

He could not snap out of it. As he sat at the long dinner table, watching the men jostle for position near the best-looking girls and downing the strong, dark Australian beer, he began to suspect that he had been wrong in letting Buller rent this house. Buller and Cramer, the two most aggressive roosters, were already glaring at each other as they competed for the attention of a plump brunette. If rank was forgotten and the men ended up fighting with each other in drunken brawls here, how could order be established when they moved back to the ship?

It was too late to undo his mistake. If he found some military barracks to house the men while the ship was on the ways, Buller, Cramer and even Wydanski would never forgive him, though he suspected that some of the younger seamen who congregated rather shyly near the kitchen might be relieved. They wouldn't have to compete. Anyway, whatever he did now, it was likely the crew of the
Y-18
would be seething with all sorts of angers and resentments before they ever left the wharf.

Moody, Angel would surely call him. Maybe so. Was some laughter and high living really so bad for men about to sail on a gas tanker into the invasion of the Philippine Islands?

Old Wydanski was not feeling so moody. His face was near beatific as he brought two full plates to a table in an uncrowded corner of the living room where his girl sat waiting for him. She was a thin little item in her mid-twenties with long lank brown hair, not the sort who attracted the young sailors, and she looked grateful for the attention of this courtly, rather handsome white-haired lieutenant. Buller had said she was a nurse. Probably Wydanski had escaped from a wife as old as he was. If these two had a few good days and nights together, only the most puritanical could object, but the sight of them leaning toward each other over the table made Syl miss Angel more than ever.

As more girls arrived, a few bringing Aussie soldiers who accepted drinks but looked as though they wanted to fight the whole American army and navy, the party became more raucous. Wydanski and his girl left, holding hands as they walked across the front porch toward her car. When Buller began to tell a bristling little Aussie sergeant that all the kangaroos ought to be grateful to the Americans for saving them from the Japs, Syl walked out. The house seemed to be getting more explosive than the
Y-18
at her worst, and there was no way to steam it out.

There are going to be brawls, he thought as he walked down a road that felt as familiar as a Connecticut suburb, looking for a place where he could call a taxi. Sooner or later, some of those Aussie soldiers would go out and come back with their mates to clean house. Which was what Buller, Cramer and a few of the others would want when they got tired of the girls. Recruit men to fight and you tended to get a fight. While doing shore patrol duty in Halifax and Sydney in Nova Scotia he had seen the crews of ships waiting to cross the Atlantic attack each other with a ferocity to match what they displayed fighting the Germans.

So what, Syl thought, should he, the intrepid captain, do about it? Not a damn thing tonight. But sooner or later the combination of booze, women, Americans of different rank and Australian soldiers in that house would be as dangerous as the mix of gas and air aboard a tanker. Someone was sure to strike a spark, MP's or Navy Shore Police or Aussie cops would arrive by the truckload, and a lot of the men would wind up in the hospital. And he would have let it happen.

The night was not hot but he began to sweat. Maybe he was just jealous—thinking of spoiling the men's fun because his own was over. Syl hated his own indecision. A bad choice was better than none—a ship's captain had to play many parts. More damn roles than most actors—but Hamlet better not be one of them. Tomorrow he would decide to let them party until they sailed or order them into barracks no matter how much they bitched.

He strode along, the heels of his black jackboots clicking on the pavement. He was Syl Grant the captain of the
Y-18
, nobody to fuck around with. A role. And the curtain hadn't even gone up yet—