Seagulls in My Soup (29 page)

Sissie stood up. She winced apologetically down at me as I finished my steamed cod. Miss Pomeroy forced her eyes away from Amyas and gazed, startled, up at Sissie, who held her breath and patted her tummy. “Ai cawn't imagine why. I've suddenly come over
dreadfully
dizzy! Oh, Mistah Cupling, forgive me! Ai think Ai'm going to have one of my dreadful turns!” Sissie's voice was faint.

La Pomeroy jumped up and put her scrawny arm around Sissie's games-mistress shoulders. “OhyoupoordearIshalltakeyoubacktotheboatrightaway!”

“Oh, dahling skippah,” Sissie sniffled, her head down, her face white, “do forgive silly old me. Ai shell go back onboard!”

I said nothing as I stared at Sissie, surprised.

“Dear Miss Saint John . . .” Amyas started to rise.

“Oh, no, Mistah Cupling; no, deah skippah, please don't bothah yourselves,” moaned Sissie as La Pomeroy half-pulled, half-led her away from the table and out of the now half-empty restaurant.

“One of those female things, as it were, eh?” Amyas suggested, when the two Englishwomen had left us.

“Might be the wine,” I said. “She usually drinks Booth's gin.”

Amyas poured himself another measure of wine and bent to attack a rubbery yellow flan pudding. “Funny creatures, as you say.”

“Delicate,” said I, chewing away at my flan.

“Think Miss Pomeroy's taken a liking to me, old man?”

“Oh, absolutely, Amyas. She's completely forgotten that foreign bloke in Formentera.”

“Always better to be among your own, as it were?”

“Of course. Can't mix oil and water.”

Amyas' ears picked up at that. For another hour and a half, over one more bottle of wine, he treated me to the story of how
Dreadnaught
's fuel tanks were rusted right through and how he was going to replace them with copper tanks. “Only thing you can't trust steel plate for, as it were . . .”

The next day when Sissie woke me, she was short with me. I stared, bleary-eyed, at her for a minute or two. As Nelson slapped my leg under the table with his tail I glanced over at La Pomeroy's berth. She was nowhere in sight. No Alice-blue dress, no mascara, no silver slippers—nothing. Only an abandoned blanket.

“Hello, where's Miss P?” I slurred.

Sissie slammed my steaming tea mug in front of me on the tabletop and harrumphed. “Hmmm . . . you might jolly-well awsk,” she muttered.

“She's gone back home, then?”

“No.”

“Formentera?”

“No.”

“Where the heck is she, then, Sissie?”

She rammed a teaspoon into her cup and viciously stirred away.

“Sissie?” I sat up now.

She glowered at me silently.

“No! She's not . . .”

Sissie almost screamed at me. “She most certainly is!”

“On
Dreadnaught
?” I took a sip of tea. “Already? When?”

“Thet
dreadful
hussy! Surely . . . Oh, deah skippah, didn't you notice lawst night, when you came onboard, thet Miss Pomeroy wasn't heah? At her age, too . . . Why, she's . . .”

“Of course, not. Amyas and I were ashore until about two, knocked back a few in the George and Dragon. Didn't notice a thing. Why, what did she do, for Chrissake?”

Sissie huffed. “Miss Pomeroy brought me back onboard, saw me safely out of the way, in my cabin, and then, as I was just . . .” Sissie almost said “taking my nightcap,” but she remembered I was not supposed to know about it. “ . . . as I was reading the twenty-first psalm, I heard her simply scrabble her things into that
dreadful
handbag of hers and climb ovah onto that bally old
Dreadnaught
!”

“So? What's wrong with that? She brought you home OK, didn't she? I think that was good of her, considering that Amyas had invited her along specially so he could get to know her.”

“But throwing herself at him like that, deah skippah!

Ai mean it's not as if she were a terribly
young
gal, is it?”

“All the more reason she should be eager,” I observed.

“But what will all these . . . these
foreigners
in the othah boats think of us? Oh poor,
dahling
Tristan—of course you just don't jolly-well
see
things the way we women see them, do you, you poor deah? More tea? Oh, you poor, poor men, and deah Mistah Cupling in the hends of thet
dreadful
woman!” Sissie wagged her head from side to side and clucked her tongue.

“Amyas was
trying
to get her onboard,” I said calmly.

“Well, of course . . . thet
Salome
had designs on him right from the very start. But to creep onboard his boat in the middle of the night, like a . . .” Sissie almost burst into tears, “ . . . a
fallen woman!
Ai simply won't know where to bally-well look when Ai pass those
awful
foreigners . . . And thet dreadful
harridan
on thet Andorran motor yacht—what will she think of us in thet awful,
devious
head of hers?”

I looked at Sissie. She was violently stirring porridge in a pan on the galley stove. “But what about you?” I asked her. “I mean you've been living alone with me onboard
Cresswell
. Don't you think they imagine we're . . . having . . .” I searched for a phrase Sissie would understand, “ . . . living in sin?”

Sissie stared at me imperiously. “Of course not! How would they bally-well dare? They know perfectly well . . . I always tell them. Ai have my own private cabin heah!” She spoke as if the poky den in
Cresswell
's bows was the Queen of Spain's own stateroom.

“Well then, why should they imagine that Miss P. is having her end away with Mister Cupling?”

“Because they don't have separate bally
cabins,
thet's why!”

“Well, Amyas can soon fix that. Get a sheet of steel plate, weld it across
Dreadnaught
's cabin, cut a bloody door in it, no problem. He's a handy enough bloke!”

“Thet's not the point!” Sissie slapped a plate of porridge in front of me. “The point is thet Miss Pomeroy slept onboard thet poor man's crawft lawst night!”

“But blimey, Sissie, she's been sleeping in my cabin for the past week. She snores, too!”

“Thet's different. Miss Pomeroy was a
guest
onboard
Cresswell
!”

“Well, now she's a guest onboard
Dreadnaught.
”

“She didn't sneak onboard
Cresswell
in the middle of the night like . . . like a
woman of the streets!
”

“Keep your voice down, Sissie. She'll hear you.”

“I just bally-well hope she
does!
”

I sent Sissie ashore to shop and simmer down for the rest of the morning, while I cleaned out
Cresswell
's bilges. It was almost noon when I heard Amyas calling for me from
Dreadnaught.
I clambered up on deck. He was back in his oily coveralls. His feet were again bare. His mustache ends were cocked up at angles of forty-five degrees from the horizontal. His eyes glowed.

“Morning, Amyas!”

“Hullo, old chap. Lovely day, as it were?”

“Not bad,” I replied, “but Sissie's still a bit upset.”

“Still tummy trouble, as it were?”

“I reckon so.”

“Well, you can expect that sort of thing in these foreign places, eh?”

“Of course, that's what I told her. Sent her shopping. Keep 'em busy . . .”

“That's the ticket!”

“Where's Miss P? She shopping, too?”

“Yes, just gone off to bring some flowers.” Amyas gazed down at his feet for a few moments, then shyly looked up again. “They like that sort of thing, you know. Of course it's a bit awkward at sea, obviously—no flowers, I mean—but I told her I could get some eighth-inch plate and cut and weld some up. Slap a bit of paint on 'em. Never know the difference, as it were.”

“When you leaving for Venice, Amyas?”

“Oh, we're heading for Palma first. We can get . . . I popped the question to Bernice last night.”

I looked at Amyas, a puzzled expression on my face.

“Oh, that's her first name. Nice, eh? Of course she's accepted, so we're going to Palma first. It's not a bad place for doing a spot of refitting . . . and they've got an English church there.”

I still stared at Amyas in silence.

“Of course you and Miss Saint John are invited to the wedding, old chap. Might be a British cruise ship in . . . I'll get the engineers along—hold up the swords, as it were, eh?”

I finally recovered my composure. “Well, delighted, Amyas. When did all this happen?”

“Last night. She came over and made me a cup of
Bovril
 . . .” Amyas turned and stared along the jetty as he spoke. “Nice little party, she is. Just the ticket, as it were.”

“If I were you,” I said, “I'd take off for Palma right away. That painter bloke in Formentera is due out of jail tomorrow. He's built like the bloody Q.E. 2, and when he gets a few noggins inside him he makes a battlewagon look like a bloomin' ice-cream cart.”

Amyas grinned. “Oh, yes, Bernice and I have discussed our fine-feathered friend in detail. We're sailing as soon as she gets back. I don't have my new mainsail yet. I've written home to have it sent on to Venice. We can manage with the old one, though, until the new one comes. Shouldn't take more than a few months . . .”

“How does Miss P . . . sorry, Bernice, like the boat, Amyas?”

“Oh, she thinks it's home away from home, as it were. Of course, as I told her, it needs a little woman's touch. She wanted to start painting this morning, but I told her no sense in it until we get the engine refit finished.”

It was “we” now. I knew Miss Pomeroy had made a hit. Momentarily, a vision of her, still in her Alice-blue dress, her pearls dangling, wielding a huge spanner in the gloomy, dank confines of
Dreadnaught
's bilges, passed through my mind. “She seems to be a handy soul,” I said.

“Yes, she's sending for her sewing machine from Palma. Says if the new mainsail doesn't arrive in a few months she'll sort of make me a new one, as it were.” As Amyas said this he fidgeted nervously. Then he said in a low voice, rapidly, “Ah, here she comes now.”

I turned to peer down the length of the jetty. I stared. La Pomeroy's walk was unmistakable—a sort of jerky jiggle, but at first I wasn't sure that the approaching figure was, in fact, Miss P. The great bunch of flowers she carried were bursts of color held close against the front buttons of a brand-new pair of black-blue overalls, much too big for her tiny frame. On her head she wore Amyas' best white-covered yachting cap, and on her feet were a pair of new deck slippers.

“Looks good, eh?” Amyas murmured as La Pomeroy, now, for the first time since I had clapped eyes on her, smiled at me shyly from behind the flower—mascaraless, rougeless, and powderless.

“Can't really sail a boat in dresses and things, eh?” Amyas said quietly. “Bought 'em for her this morning. I've already showed her through the tool-kit, of course.”

“Morning, Miss P. Congratulations!” I hollered, as Amyas helped his bride-to-be over the brand-new stern-rail of the sparkling
Dreadnaught.

“Oh dear Tristan I'm so very happy today and of course Sissie and you are coming to our wedding? (giggle)” The first giggle since Formentera.

“Of course. When's the big day?”

Amyas aimed his mustache at me, as his tiny fiancée almost lost her balance trying to reach his cheek and peck it. “Oh, not until after Christmas,” he said. “I wanted it right away, but Bernice . . .” he hugged Miss P's arm so hard that she seemed to wince, “. . . insists on waiting a while longer. A bit more respectable, as it were.”

“Yes. Wouldn't do to look as if you were rushing things, Amyas.”

“No. Not among these foreigners, anyway. They're always jumping to conclusions, aren't they? Funny chaps, but then, what can you expect?”

“I know. It's all that spicy food.”

“Well, of course Bernice and I are going in for good old plain English cooking.”

“That's the ticket, Amyas—roast beef, Yorkshire pud and gravy, eh? None of that damned immoral Continental nonsense.”

“Dear Amy as loves Yorkshire pudding don't you dear?”

“Of course. Never know where all that other stuff might lead you.”

Amyas then half-carried Miss Pomeroy to the rusty gloom of her new home. As they reached the hatchway, Miss P., nervously excited, dropped the flowers through the hatch. They scattered in the oily bilge below.

“Ohdearwhatapity! (giggle) Well never mind dear you can make some in Palma as you said.”

“Of course; gives me something to do in between refitting the engine,” replied the engineer-poet to his bride-to-be. “Can't stay idle . . .” Amyas grinned hugely over at me as he gently lowered Miss P. with one arm into
Dreadnaught
's corroded insides. “The devil has work for idle hands, as it were.”

Sissie was back onboard shortly after. It took another few minutes of argument and reasoning before she came to see that love in any form, anywhere, between any souls, is good. Eventually, after some shy resistance to my persuasion, she accompanied me on deck to call farewell to Amyas and Miss Pomeroy.

Captain Cupling, as I let go his mooring lines for him, shoved away at a great sweep oar. Silently, little
Dreadnaught
slid away from the Ibiza mole. Miss P., her face wildly happy, her new overalls already streaked here and there with black oil, her black glistening footsteps trailing over the brand-new yellow paint on deck, was excitedly trying to fit the tattered, black, ancient mainsail to the shining new masts.