Down The Hatch (22 page)

Captain S/M leaned over to the Chief of Staff. “You’ve been letting the Admiral read the newspapers again,” he whispered accusingly.

The Chief of Staff blushed and looked guilty.

“The Submarine Service is now approaching a period of great change. It is assuming greater importance every year. You can tell that it is growing in importance because the
Gunnery
Branch are trying to get in on it. Only today I squashed a proposal from Whale Island that our nuclear submarines should each carry a resident gunnery officer! I’m only sorry that I shan’t be here to see these changes carried out but I know that my successor feels much as I do. . . .“

The Admiral was a moving speaker. He was a dedicated man, but full of humour. He also had an Admiral’s essential quality, of optimism in public. When he had finished, those of his listeners still serving squared their shoulders, confident of good times and more submarines building just around the corner. Those who had retired began to feel that perhaps they had been too hasty.

“With any luck that should be all the speeches,” said Paddy.

“No,” said Commander S/M. “We’ve got the visiting V.I.P. to come. Although it doesn’t look as though he’s turned up yet.”

The visiting V.I.P. did not in fact arrive until the company had been drinking for another two hours and had long forgotten all about speeches.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Political Warfare was a political chameleon. Like the Vicar of Bray, he remained whichever government was at Westminster. He had sat for an agricultural constituency in the West of England for more than forty years and had so impressed successive Prime Ministers with his ability that he was even now, at sixty-eight, still spoken of as a coming man. He had been on the fringe of power for so long that he had acquired the mannerisms of power itself. He walked and talked like a cabinet minister. His long years as a politician had given him a touch of absent-mindedness and an ability to speak at any time on any subject. The Chief of Staff had intended to ask the Minister himself but at the last minute had settled for the Parliamentary Secretary because he lived locally.

The Parliamentary Secretary knew exactly what was required of him. Apologizing for his lateness, which he briskly blamed on a late sitting in the House, he brushed through the introductions and edged steadily nearer the dais whence, he knew with the infallible intuition of a born politician, the speeches were made. He was ready to speak long before his audience were ready to listen to him and was actually speaking before half of them were aware that he had arrived.

“Gentlemen,” said the Parliamentary Secretary, reading from a sheet of paper, “may I say that I think it a great honour to be asked to speak at your Reunion. . .”

“Who’s that funny little man?” asked Dangerous Dan, who was on his fourteenth whisky.

“Some friend of the Chief of Staff’s,” said someone, unjustly.

“. . It has always been a pet theory of mine that the Anglo-Saxon races make the finest tank crews of any. If I may roughly paraphrase a favourite saying of the Emperor Charles V, To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my tank--English! “

The submariners raised their heads from their glasses in astonishment. The Bodger caught the Chief of Staff’s look of mortal agony and shouted “Hear hear!” in a resonant voice. A few others echoed the sentiment in a bewildered chorus.

“Thank you,” said the Parliamentary Secretary, simply. “After all, we invented the tank! We perfected it. And we made brilliant use of it, all the way from the poppy-fields of Flanders to the desert sands of El Alamein.”

While the Chief of Staff stood wearing the unmistakable look of a Staff Officer when things are going irretrievably, ludicrously, wrong, the Parliamentary Secretary went on to describe a few of the more important technical advances in armoured warfare in recent years, to outline the careers of several outstanding armoured corps commanders, and to express his gratitude once more at being asked to attend the Reunion. It was a carefully composed speech for which someone had plainly done a lot of checking of facts and background and it left the Reunion as well-informed about tanks as any group of submariners had ever been. On reaching the end of his sheet of paper, the Parliamentary Secretary folded it away, stepped down from the dais, accepted a drink, and made general conversation with the Chief of Staff and several other officers.

Anxious not to embarrass their guest, the Chief of Staff racked his brain for tank anecdotes. He saw Captain S/M standing on the outskirts of the circle. “Don’t just stand there,” he hissed frantically. “Don’t you know any Shaggy Tank stories?”

Captain S/M was more than equal to the emergency.

“I well remember taking command of my first Centurion . . .” he began.

The wardroom hall porter touched Commander S/M’s sleeve.

“Signal just come, sir.”

Commander S/M read the signal, gave a great hoot of jubilation, and showed it to Captain S/M. The signal’s contents began to pass rapidly among the crowd. The Bodger, on the other side of the room, was suddenly aware that he had become the centre of attention.

“Congratulations, Bodger!”

In a moment, The Bodger was surrounded by eager hands competing to clap him on the back. A dozen voices shouted their congratulations. The Bodger himself was quite bewildered.

“But I don’t understand it,” he kept saying. “I was passed over. I was passed over some time ago.”

“Well, there it is, Bodger, in black and white!”

“Let me see that signal again.”

“There it is. From Lieutenant-Commander to Commander. Robert Bollinger Badger, H.M.S.
Seahorse
.”

“Well, fillip me with a three-man beetle! This calls for a drink! This calls for several drinks! But I still don’t understand it. . . .”

“Don’t look so baffled, Bodger,” said Commander S/M. “You had to be promoted. The Press are already clamouring for it. Your drive in that race was the best piece of worldwide publicity for the Navy in many a year. The Army and the R.A.F. are green with envy, I can tell you. They’re already planning their counter-measures, too. I hear the pongos are going in for the America Cup next year and the crab-fats are training a team to climb Everest. . .”

“I must admit I had my doubts about you in
Seahorse
, Badger,” said the Admiral. “I had a lot of doubts, I confess it. But it wasn’t only that infernal motor race. You’ve made a damned good start in that ship. You were worth it on that alone.”

“I can’t think why you’ve waited all this time, Bodger,” said Dangerous Dan, who was now on his twenty-fourth whisky.

“I’m sorry we’re not all here, sir,” said Wilfred. “I’m afraid the Midshipman is on a dirty week-end in Oozemouth. But for the rest of us, I can sincerely say ‘Congratulations,’ sir.”

“Badger?” said the Parliamentary Secretary. “That’s a familiar name.”

The Bodger prepared to tell the story of the Targa Mango again.

“Oh yes, I remember. Somebody sent me a docket a year or two ago marked ‘New Blood in Submarines’. Well of course I don’t know anything about submarines. Never have. But I did my best. I got out a list of Lieutenant-Commanders and yours was the first name on the list. So I recommended you. Obviously I knew what I was doing, eh? Now, I must go, Admiral. I have another engagement tonight. I have to speak at the Southern Command Royal Tank Corps Old Comrades Association dinner. So I’ll wish you good night. Good-bye, and thank you. Best of luck, Badger! “

Beaming genially to right and left, the Parliamentary Secretary went out to his car and drove off, leaving the Admiral, Captain S/M and The Bodger staring after him.

The Bodger’s promotion set the seal on the Reunion. The noise redoubled. The Bodger’s health was drunk in a variety of liquids. The atmosphere became charged with the authentic crackle of a successful party.

At three o’clock in the morning, The Bodger suddenly said: “What was that the Admiral said in his speech about his successor? Is he going?”

“Haven’t you heard?” said Commander S/M wearily. “It’s all been changed. Black Sebastian was promoted Rear Admiral today. He’s going to be the next Admiral here.”

The Bodger raised his glass. “Ah well,” he said. “It’s a funny life.”