Seagulls in My Soup (24 page)

I went below again, silently. Trying not to make it obvious to Sissie, I stared around. The brass oil-lamps, the brass clock, the brass ladder trimmings—every bit of brass and bronze down below had been polished. The pictures on the forward bulkhead had been cleaned and the glass polished. The galley gleamed. The biscuit tin lid I used as a navigation table—even that was polished. The cabin sole was freshly scrubbed, and so was the table. The navigation and other books had all been taken down, dusted, and replaced on the cleaned shelves. Something was very definitely in the wind.

I studied Sissie. She had on a pair of jeans now. Some tailor must have got a migraine figuring out that shape, I thought. Above them she wore a frilly blouse, with the sleeves unbuttoned and rolled back to the elbows. Her ginger hair looked as if a lion-tamer had finally discovered how to subdue it. As I sat down and inspected her, unnoticed, I thought, except by Nelson, who curiously watched this little game, she kept her eyes downcast on her bowl of burgoo, which she was doggedly trying to finish.

“Good sleep, lass?” I asked, perkily.

“Spiffing, dahling. Slept like a jolly old top! And you?”

“Like a bottom,” said I. “Like an elephant's bottom.”

“Good.” Laconic this morning, our Sissie.

“Bloody weather last night,” I said, stupidly.

“Ghastly.”

“We took quite a hammering.”

“Mmmm.”

“I was worried in case that storm-line parted.”

“Yes, lucky, weren't we?” Sissie looked at me, the corners of her eyes smiling—but only the corners.

“Nice bit o' burgoo, that was.”

“Ai'm so glad you liked it.” Head down again.

“Just right, that was.” I peered over at Nelson. “Wasn't it, boy?” Nelson wagged his tail, but kept his eye on Sissie. “Really went down well, that did,” I said, trailing off.

“I thought you'd like it, dahling.” She looked up. There was a big dollopy tear in each eye. She stood up, picked up the lunch bowls, dumped them in the washing bucket, and headed up the ladder. I heard her feet clumping forward, the forward hatch open, and Sissie climbing down into her little caboose in the forepeak. Then there came the sound of subdued sobbing.

Nelson and I looked at each other for a long minute. “Wonder what's up with the second mate today,” I murmured to him. He wagged his tail. His tongue drooped a little further.

Oh hell, I said to myself. Then, aloud, so she could hear me through the bulkhead, “What's the matter, Sissie? Did I do something?”

There was silence.

“You might as well tell me, for Chrissake. If you don't, how the heck do you expect it to be put right?”

The sounds of sniffing came from forward.

“Come on, girl, cut out the crap. No good having wrongs hidden in a sailing boat. Hang out your washing, as they say!”

More sniffing.

“All right, then, if you won't tell me, I'll take Nelson ashore for a walk!”

“(Sniffle) . . . Oh,
dahling
 . . . (sob) . . . You did so disappoint me, but I know I'm . . . just silly old me . . . (sob) . . . but I did think you would sort of spring up and go with me to see if
deah
Miss Pomeroy is
quaite
all right . . . (sob) . . . Ai'm so terrific'ly worried about her . . . (sob) . . . Ai couldn't sleep one teeny
wink
 . . . Ai've been in an ebsolute
fret
all morning . . . (sob) . . .”

For Chrissake, I said to myself. “But I
am
going with you, as soon as my burgoo's settled down. For God's sake, she's managed without you for a pair of weeks—surely a couple of hours won't make any difference?”

“Oh,
dahling,
I simply knew you would! I knew you were only teasing silly old me . . .” Her voice brightened up like a light switched on.

“Of course. I'll be ready for the off as soon as I've closed the skylights.”

There was the sound of sudden movement from forward, then the tinkle of London Dry Gin for a second or two, then a scuffle as Sissie shot up through the forward hatch.

“I simply knew you wouldn't let poor
dahling
Miss Pomeroy down,” she said as she waited on deck.

I had to look twice when I turned to her. In one hand she held her umbrella, furled, and in the other her hockey stick. Britannia was armed for the fray.

Under the warm Mediterranean winter-blue sky all was still around us, but as Sissie, her blue jeans making her look even more broad in the beam around her stern, jumped for the jetty and
Cresswell
's own stern shook, it was as if the
Monarch of the Seas
had just set forth to put the world to rights, and the Lesser Breeds without the Law were trembling the world around.

With trepidation I took up Britannia's rear-guard. Nelson, now on sentry duty, watched us as we fell into line-ahead and steamed off to do battle for our countrywoman, Miss Pomeroy.

Chorus:
Way, hey, and up she rises! Patent blocks of different sizes!

Way, hey, and up she rises, earlye in the morning!

What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

What shall we do with a drunken sailor earlye in the morning?

Verses:

Put him in the long boat 'til he's sober
(Repeat three times)

Keep him there and make him bail her!

Trice him up with a running bowline!

Lash him to the taffrail as she's yard-arm under!

Put him in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on him!

Give him a dose of the salt and water!

Take him and shake him, and try and wake him!

Give him a taste of the bosun's rope-end!

Shove him off to sea with Reuben Ranzo!

Stick on his bollocks a mustard plaster!

Shove him in a barrel with a press-gang bastard!

Soak him in oil 'til he sprouts a flipper!

Keep him in the galley 'til his bollocks are toasted!

Scrape the hair off his tits with a hoop iron razor!

—“Drunken Sailor”

This was a “runaway” chantey. It was chanted in very quick time when lines had to be hauled fast. It was the only type of worksong allowed in the Royal Navy. It dates from the early nineteenth century. Sailors always pronounced any ‘y' at the end of a word as ‘eye'.
“Way, hey”
is about as close that this savage-sounding yell can be described. Other questions posed by the chanteyman included the following: What shall we do with a thieving bastard? What shall we do with a Yankee skipper? And, appropriately for the following story, what shall we do with a drunken painter?

I didn't try to catch up with Sissie until we had passed through the port-hamlet, because I didn't want the fishermen grinning at me too much. I let
Cresswell
's second mate forge ahead, with her umbrella and hockey stick, frilly blouse, and brogue boots. It wasn't until we were around the bend in the road, and over the hill, that I hollered to her. By now she was steaming along ahead of me at about eight knots.

“Sissie!” No answer was the loud reply. Bloody hell, she deaf or something? Another bellow.
“SISSIE!”

This time she turned her head and decelerated to a slow walk. Even so, it was a good few minutes before I caught up with her.

Sailors, in general, are not eager walkers. I'm not talking about the yogurt-and-nuts-for-breakfast brigade (there are exceptions in any group of people), but I mean the average deckie. Sure, he can manage to plod around to a local bar near the waterfront, and sometimes even to roll back again, but when it comes to cross-country marathons, and especially when he is trying to keep up with an English games-mistress on her way to tackle a seven-and-a-half-foot giant, he is not exactly an odds-on favorite for the four-minute mile.

“Oh,
deah
Tristan!” she yelled when at last I was fifteen yards astern of her, “I feel so jolly
enthused!
Bally silly, ectually . . . of course a few minutes won't make much difference . . . But Ai'm so awf'ly
eagah
to know that dear,
dahling
Miss Pomeroy is awl right . . . Oh my goodness, she's so dreadfully sweet and innocent, and thet . . . thet
cad!
Thet simply
obnoxious
boundah!”

As she exploded the last word a black cloud over on the far eastern horizon suddenly flickered lightning down to the black sea below. It seemed to me as if a few tortured souls in the Inferno had all moved up one space to make way for big Sven from Copenhagen.

At last I was breathlessly alongside the Dragon of Devon, limping a little from the unaccustomed marching. Sissie's face, which a moment before had been glowering as she had consigned the drunken painter to the nethermost pit of an English hell, suddenly melted into pity. “Oh, you poor
dahling!
Ai'm trotting off
much
too fawst, aren't Ai?
Silly
old me . . .”

“It's all right. You go on ahead, if you like. I'll catch up with you. You can wait for me in the little shop at San Francisco. Don't go into Fonda Alonzo without me.”

“Whyevah
not,
dahling?”

We were passing goats and kids in a field now, and although Sissie cooed and glanced at them now and again (“Oh, my deah—look at thet sweet, gorgeous, cozy,
cuddly
little
angel.
Oh, I could just simply
hug
it!”) there was no climbing and slithering over the stone walls as there had been on our previous pilgrimage to the Fonda Alonzo.

“Because if the dangerous Dane is pissed out of his skull and you start anything with dear little Miss Pomeroy, he's going to grab you by the ears, swing you 'round, and fling you five miles back to
Cresswell
all the way from San Francisco. That's why.”

Sissie shook her hockey stick. She harrumphed. “Ai should just bally-well like to see him try!”

There was silence between us for another half-mile, as Sissie forged ahead and I trotted along just astern of her. Then I said, “What are you going to do, then, Sissie?”

“Ai'm going to dashed-well make sure that deah Miss Pomeroy is awl right.”

“And if she's not? What then?”

“Ai shell give her my address!”

My heart almost stopped. “What, on the boat?”

“No, of course not, dahling! In England, through
deah
Willie!”

“Then what?”

“Well, if thet
dreadful
foreign
beast
bullies her, Ai mean simply herds her to bally
distraction,
she must write. Ai shell tell her to pack her jolly old
kitbag
and simply march out and
fly
to Willie!”

“Mmm . . . that'll be nice.” In my mind's eye I could see the bishop and the lady children's author having tea in some leafy bower, a phantasmic black-dressed Miss Benedict hovering in the background with a croquet mallet:

“OhI'msorelievedtobebackinEngland (giggle).”

“England is the only country, my dear Miss Pomeroy, where we understand liberty? And where, consequently, no one cares about justice?”

“OhBishopSaintJohn,soclever (giggle)!”

As I imagined this meeting of minds in some faraway English cathedral town, Sissie went on. “It's the only thing Ai . . .
we
can do, my deah skippah. Thet poor little sweet soul is out heah in this dreadful,
peasanty
place, living in awf'ly
abject
misery in thet
scungy
hovel with thet . . . thet . . .” Sissie's expression was intense as she sought some way to describe what she thought of Sven. Suddenly she turned to me. “ . . . thet
white-slavah!
”

As she yelled this, small birds started from their nests in stone walls half a mile away; billy-goats meh-heh-heh'd; and an ancient windmill's sails shook as if they had been awakened. I had a vision of sixty-year-old Miss Pomeroy as the star of the Checkalov whorehouse in Buenos Aires, smothered in paste jewels, black fishnet stockings and all.

“
Nawsty
feller,” Sissie said later, a little quieter now. Billy-goats and donkeys panicked and raced away from the sides of the road. “
Awful
chep!”

“I don't think you like him, Sissie,” I observed.

“Ai wish we had
deah
Toby with us. He'd know what to jolly-well do! Chased those
awful
Germans all ovah the bally desert. Oh,
deah
Toby. I do hope thet
dreadful
chorus gal hasn't . . .” As the tiny hamlet of San Francisco Javier hove into sight, she left the rest unsaid.

“I wish we had the whole bloody parachute regiment with us,” I commented as we traipsed along the deserted street towards the Fonda Alonzo, which awaited us like a whitewashed nemesis. “And the Royal Marines, fully booted and spurred.”

Alonzo was sitting behind his otherwise empty bar when Sissie and I walked in. His jowls were still in his hands. He was yet staring into space. He started as I greeted him. He dashed around the corner and hoisted Sissie's hand, hockey stick and all, to his lips. By now Sissie was getting used to this, or perhaps it was because the hand-kisser wasn't Lieutenant Francisco; anyway, she accepted the greeting regally and smiled down at the top of Alonzo's bent head, not batting an eyelid.

“Señora!”
Alonzo gazed up at her Saxon-blue eyes in adoration as he slobbered.
“Encantado! Mi casa es su casa . . .”
Enchanted! My house is yours.

I ordered wine. “Make it a good one, Alonzo—not that stuff we had last time. I was shitting blue lights for three days after that last little lot,” I said in Castilian. A colorful language, Spanish.

Alonzo dashed around the bar again. Hurriedly he gazed over the bottles. “
Lo siento
 . . . I'm sorry,
Señor Capitán,
nothing here is good enough for your mercy and the
señora,
but down in the cellar . . . Please take a table.” He rushed out from the bar and disappeared through the back door.

Sissie and I sat down at a corner table in the dark bar and gazed at a greasy calendar for 1957. It showed two seamen in French navy uniforms, with red pompoms on their caps, both looking like they came off a 1920 toothpaste advertisement. They were grinning at a bonny lass with her hair in a bun and a red rose in her teeth, all frills and flounces.

Sissie saw me inspecting the calendar. “She's a hostess at a Sailor's Home,” she said.

“She's off to dance a bloomin' fandango, only her shoes are too tight, and anyway, she knows them froggies are skint . . .”

Even as I spoke, the sunlight streaming through the front door of the Fonda Alonzo suddenly dimmed, as if God had pulled a switch. Our immense Danish white-slaver had arrived.

The whole floor shook as Sven rolled his shoulders over toward us. Even while he was yards away from us his haunch-like hand was held out in front of him, and his great face—what I could see of it behind his mop of blond hair—was beaming. His little blue piggy eyes shone.

“Hey, what you know! The English seamens!” The giant grabbed Sissie's hand as she went rigid, and smacked it a kiss. With his other hand he reached over and ruffled my head. It was as if I was being buffeted by a swinging main-boom. For a moment my ears rang.

Sven was still dressed exactly the same as he had been the last time we had seen him. He still had five huge toes on each foot and yet another layer of dirt on them. “You come back to Formentera, hey?” he boomed. He looked wildly around him. “Where's that bloody Alonzo?
ALONZO!
” he yelled at the top of his voice. The old calendar on the wall shook with the vibrations.

“He's in the cellar,” I started to say.

“Cellar? Fuckin' cellar? I put him in his grave!”

No sooner had the huge painter said this than Alonzo came scooting in, followed by his diminutive wife, who bore a bottle. Breathlessly humble, Alonzo grabbed the bottle from his wife and pulled the cork. “Very good, this one,
señores.
From Zaragossa.” He sprang behind the bar, panting, and grabbed three glasses.

As he reached the table again, Sven seized the bottle and, just like the last time, slopped the wine—a fine, golden vintage—over the table and into the glasses. He mauled his glass and turned to Sissie. “To your health and beauty, my dear English lady!” he toasted.

Sissie's voice was small, piercing, and very steady. “I have
not
come here to be
toasted,
Mister Knutsen,” said she with a sniff.

Sven jerked his huge head and shoulders back and stared at her. He tossed the glass to his lips and swallowed the lot. He slammed the glass down on the table and hunched toward her. “What do you mean?” he growled. “What do you mean, you don't come here to be toasted? I'll toast you, all right!”

Sissie was sitting at attention now, her hockey stick on the seat beside her. “I have come here,” she said, “to jolly-well see
Miss Pomeroy.
”

Slowly the giant turned his eyes toward me. They were crafty now. “And you? What you here for, Engelsman-who-don't-go-fuckin'-nowhere?”

“I'm with her,” I replied, nodding at Sissie, who now stared directly at the Dane. She looked like Queen Victoria holding an audience with Jack the Ripper.

“You with her, eh?” the monster bawled at me. “You can't go nowhere on your own?”

“I like her company,” I replied quietly, as he slopped another glassful of wine straight down his throat.

“I toast you!” Sven shouted at me. “I fuckin' toast you. You toast me, right?”

“Why don't you toast me in Danish,” I said, “and I'll toast you in my language. OK?”

“Ja! OK!” He lifted his half-filled glass.
“SKOAL!”
he roared.

I lifted my glass. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sissie glaring at me as though I had betrayed England. I looked the blond monster straight in his piggy eyes. I smiled at him and spoke very slowly.
“Budreddi drwg ar chwi!”
I toasted him in Welsh. I slugged off my whole glassful of the best Zaragossa wine.

There was a silence for a while as Sven sloshed off two more glasses and emptied the bottle. Then he turned to Sissie. “What for you wanna see Miss bloody Pomeroy?” he slurred.

“Because she's my friend,” said Sissie.

“Your friend?
YOUR FRIEND!”
The giant slammed a fist down in front of him. “That little bitch, she nobody's friend!”

I chimed in. “She's not my friend, Sven. What do you say if Sissie goes up and sees Miss Pomeroy, and you and me have a few snorters?”

“Snorters?”

“Glasses of wine. Bloody women can't drink. You know that.”

“Ja!” The giant reached over and hit me on the shoulder, almost displacing my collarbone. I still had a deep-blue bruise there a week later. “Only good in bed, hey?”

“Right . . . Alonzo!”

Alonzo stopped studying Sissie's only curve—the one on her nose—and sprang to attention.

“Four bottles of house wine—and make it snappy!”

“Si, Señor Capitán. Inmediatamente!”

Sissie started to rise from her seat. I turned right around and winked at her. “Now, Sissie, you go up and see Miss Pomeroy, right? And of course you
simply, awf'ly
realize that I don't want to see you bringing that
dreadful, peasanty, pimply person
down into Alonzo's bar. This is men's business!”

Sissie looked at me, perplexed. I went on. “Now off you trot upstairs and see that
dreadful harridan.
Of course you know we
don't
want to see that
shocking
wretch down
here.
”

As I went on parodying Sissie's speech I could see that she was guessing at my irony, although it was obvious that she was not quite sure.

Still in a small voice she muttered, “Of course, Skip-pah. Ai shell only be a few teeny minutes.” She picked up her hockey stick and umbrella just as Alonzo set the four wine bottles on the table and Sven, completely ignoring Sissie, grabbed a bottle. He slurped the blackish-red, bitter vinegar into his and my glasses, spilling a pint on the table in the process.

“Bloody women . . .” I said to the giant.

He leered a smile at me. “Hey, Engelsman—you good guy, you know that?”

“Oh, we do our best,” I said, sipping my wine.

“But you drink like a fuckin' fairy. Like a bloody woman.” He slopped more wine into our glasses. “Look, we know how to drink in Copenhagen, I tell you. Watch me.”