We Joined The Navy (21 page)

‘Petty Officer Moody!’

‘Sir!’ Petty Officer Moody doubled out of the quarterdeck locker, where he too had hoped to remain unnoticed.

‘Why is that cadet not wearing a lanyard?’

‘Cadet Cleghorn!’

‘Yes, P.O.?’

‘Why is Cadet Vincent not wearing a lanyard?’

Peter Cleghorn, who was a leading cadet for the week, crossed over to Paul who, now conscious that he was the centre of unwelcome interest, was coiling down the rope with energy and panache. ‘Paul, for Christ’s sake, where’s your lanyard?’

‘It says on Daily Orders negative lanyards until eight o’clock,’ Paul answered.

‘Does it really?’

‘Yes.’

Paul’s answer was transmitted up the chain of command as far as the Commander. When Paul heard the Commander’s voice he knew that it had not been a tactful answer to give the Commander at half past six in the morning.

‘Tell Cadet Vincent to go and get his lanyard and report to my cabin at eight o’clock with one lanyard round his waist, one round his neck and two more round his--and now what in the name of God Almighty do you think
you’re
doing?’

A junior cadet holding a bucket of dirty water was standing uncertainly on the quarterdeck. The bucket was filled to overflowing and had already spilled on to the quarterdeck, the holy stretch of Borneo white wood valued at nearly £30,000 which
Barsetshire
’s Ship’s Company treated with a veneration only accorded in previously documented history to the Ark of the Covenant.

The English Language, that splendid instrument of self-expression, forged and shaped through the centuries, had one of its finest exponents in the Commander. The Commander combined the Gunnery Officer’s metronome steadiness, the Communications Officer’s choice of simile and The Bodger’s readiness of resource. He lashed the junior cadet from head to toe, castigated him, scourged him and delivered him almost weeping into despair, while Pontius the Pilot, Petty Officer Moody, Peter Cleghorn and Paul stood by like men on a hillside watching a storm strike a helpless village below,

Later, when the Commander had taken his wrath forward, Paul had fetched his lanyard and the water had been mopped up, Petty Officer Moody said: ‘He’ll learn. You all have to learn. When you’re as green as grass.’

In some obscurely gratifying way Paul was pleased with the remark. It implied that, for the first time, Petty Officer Moody was crediting Paul with more knowledge and common sense than at least one other human being in
Barsetshire
. It was also the first time it had occurred to Paul that, low as he himself was in the scale of living organisms in the Cadet Training Ship, there was now on board a species still lower, namely, the junior cadets. Paul could now see that there might perhaps be compensations in being in
Barsetshire
as a senior cadet. It was true that the advantages were unequivocal; they were similar to those of an old lag returning for another long stretch. Life would still be hard but at least he knew what to expect and everyone knew him. There would be some satisfaction, Paul thought, in being given more responsible duties and in being able to overawe the juniors. Not that they would need much overaweing. Paul had watched them walk wonderingly up the gangway the previous day.

‘Pretty scabby-looking lot aren’t they?’ he said to Michael as he watched them.

‘I don’t know,’ Michael said. ‘I expect we looked exactly the same when we joined. It’s a hell of a business joining this old gash-barge for the first time.’

‘I suppose so. We at least knew what we were coming to this time. They don’t. Yet. Better bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.’

‘Oh for goodness sake don’t start quoting at this stage of the cruise.’

The Bodger had also watched the new arrivals from the quarterdeck.

‘Here we go again,’ he said to the Communications Officer. ‘Here they come, like lambs to the slaughter. Look at them, coming up as though they were stepping into Hades. I wonder what they’ve been told about this ship?’

‘Probably not half of the whole.’

‘I shall have to get my notes out again tomorrow and go through my party piece. Do as I say, men, not as I do. Pretty shocking looking lot. Look at that character in uniform and brown shoes.’

‘It’s an Australian.’

‘Oh God, he’s kicked Owen Glendower.’

‘Shades of Maconochie. Incidentally, was there any kick-back about that?’

‘No. Lucky it was a cadet. If it had been anyone else there might have been some tumult and shouting back and forth.’

‘They are a terrible looking lot.’

‘Remember last cruise’s lot.’

The Communications Officer remembered.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose these aren’t all that bad.’

Two days later, when
Barsetshire
was on her way to the West Indies, Paul was given the most dreaded special duty of all. When he saw the button by his name he knew without looking at the legend that he was Commander’s Doggie, better known to the cadets as Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The Commander was the most energetic officer in the ship and he directed all his energy towards one single, unshakeable object, which was to become an Admiral, preferably an Admiral of the Fleet. He committed himself to no private or professional action without first submitting it to the test of whether or not it helped him towards flag rank. He looked upon those above him as hand-holds to help him up and those below him as footholds to keep him up. He had won the Telescope at Dartmouth, the Sword in the Training Ship, First Class awards in all his courses as a Sub-Lieutenant, the D.S.C. as a Lieutenant, promotion to Commander at the first opportunity as a Lieutenant-Commander, and he confidently awaited early promotion to Captain. He had played rugby football and squash for the Navy and he still held the Navy javelin and discus records. He was a member of the R.N. Sailing Association, the R.N. Cricket Club and the Junior Army and Navy Club. Several articles written by him under the pseudonym of ‘Conrad’ on such widely separated subjects as ‘The Role of the Navy in a War Against the Mongols’ and ‘An Outline History of the Voice-pipe’ had appeared in the
Naval Review
. He bought his uniforms and caps from Gieves, his suits from Johnson Bros, of Savile Row, his hats from Locks, his shoes from Lobbs and his underwear, ready-made, from Harrods, where he had an account. He was unmarried. He was, in short, the Compleat Naval Officer.

The Commander was complete even to his eccentricities. Achilles had a vulnerable heel, Siegfried had a spot between his shoulder-blades where the leaf masked his skin from the dragon’s blood, even Baldur could be touched by mistletoe, and Richard Gilpin was preoccupied by the Yellow Peril. At quarterly intervals he rose at the dinner table and addressed the Mess on the subject of the Yellow Peril. With the oratory of an Athenian and the powers of pantomime of a Port Said street arab, he described an effete, rotting western civilisation overwhelmed by a yelling horde of Asiatics, led by a modern Attila, who laid a bloody trail of murder, rape, arson, famine and pestilence from the Danube to the Rio Grande. The Turks had been stopped at Vienna, Attila had been checked at the very gates of Rome, the Moors had penetrated no further than the Pyrenees, but, Richard asked the Mess, who could stop them now?

The Mess President’s rhetoric was so masterly, his choice of words so graphic, and his pantomime so vivid, that it was not unusual, on the morning after the Address, to see Mr Piles furtively trying on steel helmets from the Gunner’s Store and the Chief Steward restraining two of the most junior stewards, who happened to be twins, from going about their duties back to back. Richard’s Address became a Mess institution, on a par with the silver and decanters, and the Navigation Officer, who was Mess Secretary, threw away all calendars sent to the Mess at Christmas, remarking that the Mess did not need them since the members could adequately observe the procession of the seasonal equinoxes by their President’s Address on the Yellow Peril. The Wardroom as a whole treated the Address as Frederick the Great’s courtiers must have tolerated his playing of the flute, as the harmless idiosyncrasy of a hard-pressed administrator, although The Bodger had a theory that the one thing which really scared Dickie was the thought that the Yellow Peril might come upon them all before he had become an Admiral. The Bodger maintained that Dickie’s most recurrent nightmare was one in which he was massacred by little yellow men while still wearing a Commander’s uniform. Popular opinion on the Lower Deck, however, which received each Address
verbatim et literatim
from the stewards, held that Dickie’s grandmother had been raped during the Boxer Rising.

At the beginning of the cruise the Commander was recovering from a severe bout of influenza (contracted at a party given for the children of his sister, whose husband was a Rear Admiral) and the Ship’s Company had hoped that disease had chastened him. But from the moment on the first day of the cruise when they had heard the pipe--’Chief Bosun’s Mate, Sailmaker and Captain of the Side report to the Commander’s cabin at the rush’ and ever since, the Ship’s Company had regretfully concluded that their hopes had been unfulfilled and, by the time Paul reported at six o’clock to start his day’s duty, the word had run many times around the length and breadth of the ship-- ‘Richard’s himself again!’

As the Commander, followed by Paul, came abreast the midships cross-passage after attending both Watches, a figure carrying a small canvas bag darted up out of the hatch from the Cadets’ Messdeck and scuttled away long the upper deck. The Commander started and pointed like a dog at a shoot.

‘You there!’ he shouted.

The scuttling figure came to a quivering standstill.

‘Yes you! Come back here!’

The figure hurried back.

‘D-did you mean
me
, sir?’ quavered George Dewberry.

‘Of course I meant you. What are you doing?’

‘I’m Cadet E.M., sir.’

‘Cadet what?’

‘Cadet Electrician’s Mate, sir.’

‘And what in hell’s name is that?’

‘Well, sir, I go around with this little bag and mend electric light bulbs. Or something, sir.’

The Commander thrust his face down to within an inch of George Dewberry’s.

‘What do you mean,
or something
?’ he hissed.

‘Well, sir ... I, well what I mean is ... you see, sir, nobody’s really
told
me . . .!’

George Dewberry’s hesitation was excusable. A Cadet E.M.’s duties were nebulous. They had never been properly defined and George Dewberry’s definition was perhaps as good as any. When George Dewberry reported to the Cadet Office the Chief G.I. had given him an armband and a small canvas bag and told him to get cracking. When George Dewberry had asked what he was to get cracking on, the Chief G.I. had intimated that it was immaterial so long as it took place removed from the Cadet Office. His equipment gave George Dewberry no enlightenment. The armband had faded to anonymity and the small canvas bag contained the stub of a smashed electric light bulb, a piece of copper wire two inches long, and the Chief G.I.’s shoe-cleaning gear.

George Dewberry had therefore become a Cadet E.M. with an exhilarating sense of pioneering, of having the world before him to do with as he wished. But he had been arrested by the Commander before he had even time to reach the frontier. George Dewberry was unable to account for his movements and Paul was beginning to feel sorry for him when there was a fortunate distraction. The Commander caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head.

‘Mr Badger!’ he barked.

The Commander and The Bodger disliked each other. They were natural opposites. The Bodger wished that the Commander would pay more attention to the Ship’s Company and leave him to run the cadets as he liked, while the Commander considered that The Bodger’s appointment as Cadet Training Officer was a terrible mistake in Admiralty policy, tantamount to training the next generation of naval officers as bookies’ runners.

The Bodger saluted politely. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘Mr Badger, this cadet is skulking.
What
he’s supposed to be doing, I don’t know, and
he
doesn’t know. I’ll leave you to deal with him.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

The Commander stalked off. The Bodger beetled his eyebrows at George Dewberry.

‘What have you been up to, Dewberry?’

‘Nothing sir, really. I’m Cadet E.M. for today, sir, and the Commander asked me what I was doing so I said I was changing electric light bulbs, sir. Or something, sir.’

‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Dewberry. This is a golden rule in the Navy. Even if you don’t
know
what you’re doing, always
look
as though you do. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred nobody will ever know the difference. Now cut along and mend electric light bulbs, or something.’

‘Aye aye, sir! Thank you, sir!’

The Bodger watched George Dewberry double happily away.

‘Ah well,’ he said to himself. ‘Little things please little minds, little pants fit little behinds. Let that be today’s beautiful thought’.

The Bodger pursed his lips, clasped his hands behind his back, and wandered enigmatically off to shave and change before breakfast.

Meanwhile, the Commander continued along the upper deck. As he walked the decks emptied in front of him and refilled again behind; he seemed to carry an uneasy bow-wave before him which slipped aside to let him pass and filled in again in an uncomfortable wake behind.

Paul, following miserably, began to feel like a leper’s dog. This character, Paul thought, could not have been born in the normal manner. He must have been from his mother’s womb untimely ripped, and given sour grapes to suck for milk. He must hate everybody, including himself. Poor old George, obviously doing his best in spite of the fact that he had not the vaguest idea of what he was supposed to be doing, torn up for--

Paul looked up. Cadets were still scrubbing decks. Petty Officers were watching them. The sea still heaved and scraped at the ship’s side. The horizon was still visible and level, with the sun still normal in the east. Everything was as it was every morning at scrub decks, except the most important item for Paul. The Commander had vanished.