Seagulls in My Soup (10 page)

Sissie was aglow, hopping around and humming.

“What's up now?” I asked her.

“Oh, Tristan, Ai've simply been
dying
to tell you. Oh, happy,
happy
day!”

“What . . . did you win the football pools?”

“No, silly, but almost as good. My dahling,
dahling
brothah Willie is coming to Ibiza on holiday
next week!”

My heart sank. Willie was the Bishop of Southchester. “Where's he staying?” I asked. It's bad luck to have clergy onboard.

“In the Hotel Montesol,” she said.

“Good.” I immediately felt better.

“And
dahling
, I met such an
awf'ly
sweet, terribly naice gentleman. He's an art collector and owns simply
oodles
of works by famous . . .”

I didn't wait for her. “Painters. Haven't we had enough of bloody painters on this little trip?”

“But this cheppie is
supah!
I'm told he's related to the Hungarian royal
femily 
. . .”

“Yeah, and I'm the Pope of Gozo.”

“ . . . He's
eb
solutely sweet, and simply knows everyone, and he's invited me to take Willie to tea in his villa in the Old Town, and oh
dahling
Tristan,” she sighed wistfully, “it's so bally
naice
to have tea with
really
supah people and simply spiffing conversation. Ai mean theah seem to be so many simply
peasanty
sort of . . . sordid,
pimply
people about these days, aren't theah?”

“Let's hope the tea is Lipton's and not that bloody Lapsang Souchong,” I muttered. “OK, then we'll sail back to Ibiza on Sunday.”

“Oh,
supah!
Then you'll be able to come to tea with Willie and me next Tuesday?”

“Maybe. What's this art-collector bloke's name?”

Sissie fished in her junk-filled raffia bag and brought out a tiny address book. She peered inside. “Ah, yes, dahling, heah it is . . . Elmyr Dore-Boutin.”

“Sounds more like French to me, but you never know, of course, with these bloomin' foreigners.”

“He's such a simply
charming
cheppie!”

“Probably a pox-doctor,” I joked, as Sissie set to making lunch.

Little did I realize that I was shortly to meet one of the strangest, most notorious, intriguing, pitiful, and funny characters that the art world of this century has known.

Oh, they calls me Hangin' Johnny,

Chorus:
Away, boys, away!

They says I hang for money,

Chorus:
So hang, boys, hang!

They says I hang for money,

But hangin' is so funny,

At first I hanged me daddy,

And then I hanged me mammy,

Oh yes, I hanged me mother,

Me sister and me brother,

I hanged me sister Sally,

I hanged the whole damned family,

I'd hang the mate and skipper,

I'd hang 'em by their flippers,

I'd hang a rotten liar,

I'd hang a bleedin' friar,

A rope, a beam, a ladder,

I'd hang you all together,

We'll hang and haul together,

We'll hang for better weather.

“Hangin' Johnny” is a t'gallant halyard chantey or “sweating up” chantey. There is a marked resemblance to “Shenandoah” in the tune. It is distantly related to a song of the American Civil War, sung by black Union regiments.

When the halyard had been hauled it was then swigged; that is, the last few centimeters of line were hauled in and belayed. The sing-out for this operation was: “Hang me bullies, heavy asses! Hang, you sons o' whores, hang! Hang heavy!”

On Saturday, having not much else to do but sit on deck, watch the changing scenery, and wonder where we would be in a year's time, we sailed for the sandy, low island of Espalmador (The Golden Palm), about two miles to the north of Formentera. There
Cresswell
anchored in a beautiful wide bay on the western, leeward side of the island. The bay was fronted by a mile-long crescent of clean, white sand, and backed by a single low white house in a grove of olive trees, and a long line of golden palm trees, which shimmered in the morning breeze.

The island was owned then by an Irishman who had fought on the side of Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The previous owner had been a Government supporter; it was rumored that he had been executed by the Falangists, and the island handed over to its present owner by way of reward. But the Irishman was never on the island at any time while I was there, and in any case I would have been delighted to anchor in such a beautiful spot, even if it had been backed by the Adlerhof at Berchtesgaden.

With
Cresswell'
s shallow draft of only two feet, nine inches, we were able to anchor the boat within feet of the white sand.
Cresswell
sat among the tiny wavelets like a dowager duchess in an infants' school. The water of the bay was so clean that we could clearly see the killock anchor on the sea-bottom thirty feet astern of the rudder. Schools of tiny fishes, gleaming when they turned their squadrons beam-on to the sun, darted and darkened, like a sudden frown, in the shade under the hull.

In the afternoon Sissie and I waded into the beach and walked to the windward side of the island, past the grove of olive trees, all leaning to the west like seamen holding themselves against a high gale. I collected a few birds' eggs—just enough for breakfast the next day, and Sissie found some dainty seashells.

On the way back to the boat we paused for a moment in the shade of the lone old palm tree which had given its name to the island and marked the grave of the previous owner. His ghost, it was said, still walked the shore on moonlit nights. Younger palms, glittering green, swept in a long line right the length of the island, their leaves rolling and flashing in the intermittent breezes which suddenly, dramatically failed, leaving the line of trees hushed and the lone palm drooping, weeping over the grave. Then the wind would stir again, and a gust would stagger down the beach before an advancing wave of sunlight and shadow, tossing leaves that rippled like silk against the blue sky.

In the evening, just before dusk, when the air was full of fluttering bats, Sissie and I again walked ashore. In the gloaming the boarded-up house seemed as if its life was over. The bats swirled around it, and among the gnarled olive trees whose noduled, bunioned branches all streamed toward the west, away from the prevailing breeze, as if they were Odysseus' crew reaching for the Ocean.

We walked to the far side of the island, to a place where the sea folded over itself, over and over, onto an invisible beach. We stood there looking out into the solid black nothingness of the night as the seas rolled in and crashed onto the rocks at the edges of the beach. We had some difficulty in finding our way back to the boat, but it was a small island and we were free and unhurried, and we knew that
Cresswell
was sleeping in the phosphor-starred waters of the bay somewhere on the other side. We walked almost all the way around the island, but we found her and were back in time for a supper of fish and chips. Then we lolled topsides, first in the dark, then in starlight as the breeze gently cleared the sky, and listened to the BBC overseas program, the London Symphony Orchestra. Brahms and silence from Sissie. Nirvana.

The stars cast their shimmering magic down through the night over Espalmador. Slowly the light breeze backed to northerly. Looking north we could see Ibiza enfolded in the night, and cheering glimpses of twinkling lights high up the mountainsides. It was as if the Creator had commanded a thousand new constellations to keep Polaris company. The offshore breeze brought the scent of woodsmoke to us. All was peaceful and restful. The murmur of the sea on the rocks on the other side of the island was not something for
Cresswell
to fear. The soft strumming of the sea's bass notes kept Brahms good company.

We were both up at four a.m. Under a canopy of stars Sissie weighed both anchors while I hoisted the creaking maingaff. Up went the mainsail. I hoisted next the working jib, which backed as the light breeze caught it. Round went the hull, almost in the boat's own length; smack went the mainsail, and we were off and moving as humans were meant to move, with muted sounds, a full sail, a taut helm, and a starry sky.

Once through the mile-wide strait between Espalmador and Ibiza we found a courteous easterly breeze awaiting us. It carried
Cresswell,
dancing with anticipation of the coming fine day, on a beam reach directly toward the entrance to Ibiza harbor. Outside the entrance the sound of surf was curiously evocative and, in some strange way, comforting, although for voyagers there are often times when it is the most feared of sounds. But after three hours of the sea's limited vocabulary it was the voice of the shore that was friendly to us.

Cresswell
sailed, in the breaking dawn, through the harbor entrance at the end of the high seawall. The town raised itself above the breast of the hill to the west of us. The whitewashed houses, reflecting the red dawn, seemed to be made of pink sugar icing. The narrow streets wound up toward the biscuit-colored ancient walls of the Old Town, atop which the fortress frowned and the cathedral tower admonished the scarlet-slashed sky like an upraised finger.

Approaching Ibiza from the sea was at first startling, then a little depressing; but after Ibiza had worked its spell on us we could accept the shabby, shop-spoiled lower town. It was like being in love with someone who stutters and drops things.

Cresswell
rounded the
muelle abrigo,
the outer mole, and, as Sissie lowered the maingaff, I headed for the town quay. As the boat slowly, silently lost speed, everything fitted together—the light breeze, the lightening dawn sky, the young sunshine, the whitening, shining town. In a moment we had cut ourselves away from our vision of the sea. A barrier of hills and cliffs and a high seawall were now between us and the large horizons.

Soon, as we approached the quay, the slope of the town rose ahead of us, solemn and enormous, while the harbor in which we floated, now stopped, was quite calm. The boom was slung inboard, the morn-bedewed mainsail canvas was collapsed in folds over the coachroof, and Sissie, in her gym-slip, was standing on the bow, staring at me intently, waiting for my command to anchor, like an Olympic torch-bearer hovering, nerve-tensed, for the passing of the sacred flame.

So quiet was Ibiza town in the dawn that we could hear an echo of our words from the high cliffs close by. I stared around me. Everything was still. I perused the town quay and saw that all the boat-berths were occupied. A visiting squadron of six or seven powerboats—Spanish, from their looks, probably from the Barcelona Yacht Club—were lined up stern-to at the quay in a chromium-plated display of wealth. A deckhand idled on the foredeck of one of these floating mansions, watching
Cresswell,
suspecting that she was about to trespass into the realms of power and money.

“No room, Sissie,” I called to my deckhand.

“Oh, Ai say, what a
pity.
Ai'm sure the people on those boats must be ebsolutely spiffing . . .”

“Yes . . . Right, well, hoist the main again. We'll go over to the north side of the bay and moor alongside one of those old hulks.”

Soon Sissie, her muscles bulging like baby's bottoms, had the maingaff hoisted again and the working jib taut against the masthead. I hauled in the sheets and we were off, silently and gently, across the calm harbor, past a seemingly huge ferry which plied to and from Majorca.

Soon we were secured amid a small fleet of ancient wrecks. There
Cresswell
was to wait patiently, guarded from the hard winter winds by useless, worn-out old Ibizan sailing schooners. They were all big vessels, up to 140 feet long, and their crumbling masts towered over tiny
Cresswell,
while their old, tatty rigging whispered of their lost, romantic youth. In the southeasterlies of the night, the fleet could be heard complaining—a groan from a hull half-full of rainwater, the creak from an unbraced gaff working on a rusted parrel; and less clear sounds, the low moaning and cursing of damaged ships. In the morning we would find them silent and innocently forlorn, motionless in the sunshine, like a fleet of sunken relics thrown up from the seabed by some passing catastrophe.

Our berth among the hulks, even though it was sad for me, was very close to the center of town, with the umbilical post office and the Alhambra Cafe below the Hotel Montesol, where the foreign colony met. It was a strange mixture in town—rogues and angels, refugees, revolutionaries, ex-Nazis, unfrocked Jesuits, frocked Calvinists, hippies, retired civil servants, tobacconists, writers who had never written, others who did nothing else; con-men and con-women, painters, sculptors, gentleman farmers, stock-and-bond investors, gamblers, idlers, lady schoolteachers of a dozen nationalities, some still active; whores and gigolos, all still active; cynics, opportunists, drug-dealers, and alcoholics; heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, trisexuals, ambisexuals, omnisexuals, asexuals, and transvestites; introverts, extroverts, retroverts, detectives, defectives—you name it, they were all at the Alhambra by eleven a.m., rain or shine. There, on Tuesday forenoon, I waited for Sissie to go to the airport in an ancient taxicab and meet her brother Willie.

It was about lunchtime when Sissie returned. The well-off foreigners were all sharpening their appetites before seeking to increase their girths, and the hustlers and hucksters were sharpening their eyes and ears as they sought to increase their ill-gotten gains.

Sissie was accompanied by a short, chubby, red-cheeked gentleman of about sixty. His hair, under his Panama hat, was silver. He sported muttonchop whiskers and a wart on one side of his nose, which was slightly hooked, so that it looked as if it didn't belong to the rest of his face. He wore a priest's collar, a black shirt, and an immaculate beige tropical suit over plain black shoes. Despite his age and his chubbiness he walked bouncily, like a gymnast who is absolutely certain that God is on his side.

As the pair came along, their faces (apart from his nose) conclusively demonstrated that they had emerged, although years apart, from the same mother—back in the dim, and, in his case, obviously distant past, when the world map was almost wholly red, and fat, jolly Teddy-boy sat on the throne of England.

Excitedly Sissie wended her way through the strange congregation in the Alhambra, dragging the somewhat disoriented cleric by the sleeve to my table, where I sat, my week-old copy of the
Times
now discarded, with the crossword only half-solved.

“Tristan,
dahling
!” she screeched.

Only one of the blanket-bundled bevy of bearded bums at the table next to mine winced. The others all continued staring glassy-eyed, as if they had already glimpsed their prospects fifteen years ahead, and were in some Siberia of the soul.

“Deah,
dahling Skippah! You simply must . . . I'm simply
delaighted
to introduce to you my brothah,
deah
Willie.”

We shook hands. Willie's felt like a freshly landed dab. His grip fluttered. He smiled broadly.

His voice boomed like a great cathedral organ. It was a very loud, round, fruity, mournful, sincere voice, and each syllable he boomed seemed to emerge from his generous mouth like a tennis ball being backhanded across the net. At the end of each phrase the tone rose, so that he always seemed to be asking a question. His voice reminded me of the bass section of a choir rendering a Gregorian chant.

“Awf'ly nice to meet you?” he chanted. “I've read so much about you in Sissie's letters?”

“I hope she didn't say anything bad,” I said.

“Oh, no,” he chortled.

I'd never really known what the word “chortle” signified until I heard Bishop Willie Saint John do it that noontime at the Alhambra. The chortle issued from his lips like wine burbling from a suddenly unbunged barrel. The sound reminded me of the mating call of the walrus, or the noise a flock of penguins makes when the whole bunch decide to change the direction of their comical waddle. As the liquid, bubbling chortle escaped from Willie, I decided that it came either from an over-goodwilled innocent or from an evil demon. Another brief glance into Willie's bright blue eyes convinced me that the former possibility was more likely.

“Oh, no, nothing at all, Captain,” he chortled again. “And I do hope you will address me as Willie?”

“All right, but for Chri . . . for goodness' sake, don't call me Captain. It's a mode of address for a paid functionary.”

“Ah, yes. Quite so.”

He turned to Sissie. “Miss Benedict is playing in the croquet finals at Windsor?” He turned to me again. “Miss Benedict is my housekeeper?”

The bishop's accent was not nearly as “refined Kensington” as Sissie's. It was good, plain, straightforward Victorian-style upper-class English, with all the vowels said as they
look.

“Oh,” I nodded, wishing I'd finished the crossword.

“Otherwise, I mean if it weren't for the croquet match, I could have had her accompany me to Ibiza?”

Sissie's face cracked. “How simply
spiffing
that would have been!
Deah
Miss Benedict—oh, I
do
hope she wins something. She tries so
terribly
hard.”

I cocked my eye at Sissie. “Yes, we could have taken on the local police team.”

The bishop looked at me with genuine interest. “Really?” he asked in a sharp tone. “Do they have a croquet side here?”