Good Enough For Nelson (32 page)

The
Highflyer
Affair
had no cast list, the parts being played anonymously by members of the staff and OUTs. The play was only some thirty-five minutes long, but from its first moments The Bodger became aware that here was something of genuine and permanent value to the College. This piece could be performed again and again, once every term, without losing its attraction or its relevance. The story was simple, but as it unfolded it allowed lateral glimpses into human motives and problems of the most subtle kind. Swiftly, the Prof.’s text set his scene: a new ship, a frigate, which should have been happy, and a new Captain who should have done well, in and for that ship. But the Captain ruined his own good luck with his misbehaviour. The Prof.’s text exactly caught the tones of growing dismay, the mounting dissatisfaction, of a ship’s company who never knew where they stood with a Captain who changed from overfamiliarity to severity in the course of one conversation, whose officers were publicly supported one moment, publicly berated and betrayed the next. There was no formal scenery, but the stage cunning in the Prof.’s cues managed to suggest the unfortunate geography of the ship’s main living spaces, with the Captain’s cabin, the wardroom and the senior ratings’ mess so situated that the wrong people constantly met at the wrong time. The Prof. also included, if only by implication, the external circumstances which had also served to hasten the decline in the ship’s morale: the three Captains appointed in less than a year, the four Captains’ (F) formal ship inspections arranged and cancelled within nine months and the fifth arranged, and carried out, on the day before the sailors left for their Christmas leave, and above all, the ship’s pleas for certain ratings to be drafted, ignored or shelved. The Prof.’s dialogue also emphasised that the ages and temperaments of some of the most senior ratings could not have been worse chosen to aggravate the effects of the youth and inexperience of some of the officers, and especially of the First Lieutenant. The progress of events in
The
Highflyer
Affair
had a kind of fearful inevitability. Given the circumstances, and the Captain’s personality, it all had to follow on. And yet, for the audience the most terrible moment arrived when the Captain awoke to what he was doing wrong, and still persisted. He recognised the better, and chose the worse. In the end, he also knew that what he had done had been done many times before. His sin was not even original. The confidential report on the affair commented that ‘no new lessons had been learned’.

The audience watched, with pity and sympathy and foreboding, the splendid informality and companionship of a small ship, which are normally one of the glories of the service, being allowed to degenerate into slackness, and carelessness, and finally into contempt, disobedience of orders, and mutiny. When the curtain fell, there was silence for a few moments. The audience knew that they had been shown the dark side of naval failure, and for a time they felt that they too were still looking down at a professional abyss which might open for them. They waited so long that for those few trembling moments the Prof. thought he had failed. But then the great driving, surging applause, and The Bodger’s hand-shake, reassured him. He sat back in his seat, nodding and smiling with pleasure and relief.

‘
Exegi monumentum
.. .’ He breathed. He had, he knew, written a genuine domestic tragedy.

The summer term swung to its close in a blaze of the hottest weather of the year. That end-of-term feeling caught almost everybody by surprise, as they realised that these were the last week-day divisions of the term, these were the last cricket matches, the last sailing races, the last lectures, the last tests and examinations. Suddenly, for the ambitious and the idle alike, there was no more time, to make more impressions or amends. It was only a time for reckoning up, for bills and results and marks and reports and recommendations, with appointments for most, and disappointments for a few.

The last major event of the term was Lord High Admiral’s Divisions, with the prize-giving, and the passing-out parade of those who were leaving the College and going to sea. The day was the hottest of the year. By eight o’clock that morning, the temperature was already rising fast, so that Petty Officer Pounter’s boots could make noticeable heel-marks on the parade ground surface. By nine o’clock, the guard drawing rifles and webbing equipment in the armoury stayed in shirt-sleeves, avoiding putting on their heavy reefer jackets until the very last necessary moment. By eleven o’clock, when the divisions had fallen in, the parade ground was a cauldron. Mr Spicer, the Parade Chief, Petty Officer Pounter and their fellows loped up and down the ranks, like Zulu witch-doctors, smelling out the weakest members and willing them to faint, so that they could be carried off without bothering the main event. Petty Officer Pounter concentrated ferociously upon Syllabub, wedged for the occasion between the two tallest, solidest, most reliable drilling members of his division. But Syllabub held out stoutly and it seemed that he would be taking part in the march past.

But otherwise, Lord High Admiral’s Divisions were, as Petty Officer Pounter had been prophesying for days, ‘The same, only more so’. As somebody said, even the College crows knew the routine well enough to lift off out of the way at the right time. The only uncertain members were the visiting relatives and friends, who had to be marshalled and herded into their places like reluctant film extras or rather dim school-children. Lady Moll was there, as usual, surveying the latest crop like a port shipper on the Douro wondering whether or not to declare a vintage, but the great majority were slightly embarrassed British parents, who formed a straggling coloured line of hats and coats and suits and scarves and handbags which had stretched and thickened until it was some four or five deep, extending down to the horns of the two ramparts by the time divisions began. There were retired NOs in battered bowlers, and Fleet Chiefs in uniform with one campaign or coronation medal. There were bank managers from Birmingham, with their plump wives in pink pudding hats to go to Buckingham Palace in. They came from their farms, and their sub-post offices, and their sales rooms and their board rooms and their surgeries and their airliner controls and their ships’ bridges, from their semi-detacheds and their villas and their penthouse suites and their moated Tudor manor houses and their country cottages and their terraced maisonettes, and they had brought their wives and their younger sons and their eldest daughters, and some had brought granny, and the woman next door, and Nigel from the corner who wanted to join the Navy, and Uncle Arthur who said he was at Gallipoli. Two brought their dogs, and one was followed by the bailiffs. All were delighted, and impressed, and pleased to be there. As The Bodger said, there was nothing like Lord High Admiral’s Divisions for reassuring the tax-payers.

Amongst the crowd were the national TV cameras. It was unusual for them to attend such a parochial event, but the College had recently been in the news and no doubt they were hoping that, with a little bit of luck, the visiting Royal Personage might fall gibbering and shrieking onto the parade ground. However, the visiting Royal Personage, who was himself an alumnus of the College and had been a midshipman in the old
Superb
in The Bodger’s time, held firm, like Syllabub.

Adrianovitch won a prize for elocution, and Persimmons won the cross-country running cup, but many of the other prizes were distributed with a capriciousness which would have made an oriental nabob pensive. The most obscure OUTs were summoned up to receive the most unlikely prizes, for the fastest-tied sheepshank, the most accurately laid dan-buoy, the most quickly climbed rope, the steadiest ballroom dancer, the most improved backward swimmer, and the most consistent dinghy helmsman, of the term. Bombulada was commended for his electronic engineering, and Syllabub, to everybody’s stupefaction, won a prize for astro-navigation.

The calling of Syllabub’s name caused a brief but fierce and unseemly scuffling in the ranks of his division. The two on either side of him had been strictly warned to intercept any unscheduled movement on his part. When Syllabub tried to step forward, his two keepers at once grabbed and held him. No matter how hard Syllabub struggled, they still held him and only a warning explanatory bark from Petty Officer Pounter released him. On the way back with his prize Syllabub lost his bearings, doubled past his own division, carried on up the ramparts and out of sight. Petty Officer Pounter did not attempt to go and find him.

Blueston won the sword for the most outstanding OUT of his course and McAllester, to nobody’s stupefaction, the Sovereign’s Sword for the best OUT of his whole intake.

Watching his son march up to receive his prize, salute and turn away, the Prof. could not prevent himself bursting into tears. The boy had been right, and he had been tragically, unforgivably, wrong. He had chosen his own profession and he had been entitled to his father’s support and love, which he had needed all the more after his mother’s death. Whatever the Prof.’s private views of the Navy as a career for his own son, it had been the boy’s own choice and his father should have backed him up. The Prof. made up his mind that he and his new wife-the Prof. acknowledged, with shame, that he had not consulted his son about his marriage - would do their best to make amends.

The Prof. was not the only one to be moved. When the divisions marched off, the music and the marching, and the sense of fellowship, with their arms all swinging in unison, affected even Caradoc. He too felt tears stinging his eyes. He despised himself that he should feel so, but he could not help it. The romantic appeal of the Navy had proved too much for him, as he had always feared it would. Here was Caradoc the outsider, Caradoc the cynic, Caradoc the unaffected bystander, Caradoc the realist, shedding tears of pride, merely because he was marching with his friends to the tune of ‘On the Quarterdeck’!

Joyce Soames watched her husband march past, from among the crowd. She stood near the back for fear he would see her, but she had no difficulty in picking him out. There he was, almost smiling as he always did and, as he said, was always being told off by the GI for it. There he was, as pleased as punch with himself and the Navy. Joyce was sorry she had made things difficult for Alfred. It was his life. He had chosen it and he loved it and Joyce had known that when she married him.

Admiral Sir Jasper Abercrombie Sebastian Persimmons, KGB, DSO, DSC, watched his son’s division march past from his own unobtrusive position deep in the crowd. He had come to Dartmouth, incognito, under pressure from his wife to see how their younger son was getting on. The Admiral had never thought his son suitable for the Navy, although he had been overjoyed when he entered. The Admiral had always thought himself a good judge of men but now, as he watched his son’s division march past and caught the look on the boy’s face, he admitted he might have been wrong about his own son.

Julia, and Lucy, and Polly were also watching, with varying feelings. Julia had crossed her fingers and was hoping that nothing would go wrong and upset Robert. Polly could hardly take her eyes off Lionel. In his long green academic gown and his jaunty green cap, he had never looked so smart. After all those frightful dog-robber jackets and shapeless grey flannel bags he always wore, that cap and gown gave him a swaggering, almost Renaissance look, like a picture she had once seen of the young Edward VI. Lucy watched the divisions marching and counter-marching, wondering how soon it would be before Ikey had charge of them, as Captain of the College.

The divisions stepped off, and wheeled and saluted and marched away. The band swung round and with steady tread followed them up the ramp. The staff officers saluted, and broke off. The families broke their watching ranks. In a moment the parade ground had relaxed, to allow families to stroll about with their sons and nephews. Instead of a drilling place, the parade ground now had the air of a college quadrangle,
en fete
.

Down at the Main Gate, a naval stores lorry drew up and the driver thrust his papers at the sentry.

‘What you got?’

‘Bog paper. Load of toilet paper, mate.’

The sentry’s smile changed to a scowl. ‘Pull the other one, Jan, it’s got bells on it.’

‘ ’Strue, so help me God. Cross me heart and hope to sleep with Betty Grable, it’s true, every word. That’s a load of loo paper there, mate. Three tons of it. Marked urgent, that’s what. They having an epidemic or something up there, are they?’ The sentry turned and, with the lorry driver, stared up the hill, at the massive stone ramparts of the parade ground, visible through the trees.

‘Search me,’ said the sentry.
I
don’t know what happens up there.’