Seagulls in My Soup (31 page)

“Yow!” he roared, as little traces of flame ran around the beams above.

I flinched, expecting the whole boat to burn down to the waterline around our scorched ears.

Jonnie turned to me, his eyes now wide open, shining like a child's, innocent and happy. “You like? Look, I do it again, ja?”

“No, that's all right. I'm convinced, Jonnie. But isn't it a bit dangerous, I mean in a wooden boat?”

“I practice every day. I even do it over the side. Attracts the fish at night! The kids in Fréjus, they love it so much!”

I supped onboard
Sans Culotte
with Jonnie that evening. He had some freshly caught mullet and a couple of small squid. As I ate I stared around the cabin. There was no sign of any navigation books or instruments. Casually I brought the matter up. “You use the British tables or the French, Jonnie?”

“The table—I make it good, ja?” He slapped the cabin table, a wooden job, rough but well-made and sturdy.

I grinned. “No, I mean navigation tables.”

“Yow!” Again the Swiss flung his arms out. “I don't have the time to learn yet. I use . . .” He scrambled up and reached under the mattress of his berth. He slapped a large book in front of me. It was a French school atlas. Quickly he turned over the pages. On a map of the Atlantic ocean he had scrawled an unsteady line right across the pages from Gibraltar to Barbados . . .

Next day, when I returned from the post office, Jonnie and
Sans Culotte
were gone. He had confided in me the night before, over supper, that he knew a good fishing place off the southeast tip of Formentera. I guessed that was where he had headed, to catch his next few days' food. He had told me he was out of money.

The storm rose about nine o'clock that evening. The local fishing boats were already in harbor, in the safest place from the howling easterly, right in front of the bodega Antonio. I had made sure that tiny
Coquette
was secured up, but her movement in the sea which the wind was sending into the harbor was far too sickeningly violent for me to remain onboard in any kind of comfort. It was bad enough that she had a mere three feet of headroom, but added to that, a foot's continual bouncing up and down sent me ashore in the wind and rain. I stuck my head into the bodega as I passed by. It was crowded with about twenty fishermen.

“Anyone seen the Swiss ketch that left this morning?” I asked. There was a sudden quenching of talk. Most heads shook. Fishermen are not the best of company ashore when the catches are lean and the weather is unsettled. I headed out into the rain again.

I had walked for half a minute on the otherwise deserted waterfront when Josélito caught up with me. Ever since my Halloween visit to the graveyard with Rory O'Boggarty, Josélito had been more of a confidant of mine than any other Ibizan.

“I saw the Swiss this morning,
Señor Capitán.
”

I turned into the rain and wind to face Josélito. “Where?”

“He was fishing off Punta de Cala Calador.” José's eyes looked hurt.

“Christ, he's got no engine and he's on a lee shore. With a rig like he's got he'll never beat his way offshore! The wind'll have his boat on the rocks! We've got to do something, José!”

“It's God's will. He was stealing our fish. He had some lobster pots down, too. We're not stupid. We watch every boat,
señor
. We have to—our families' lives depend on it!”

“Then you won't help me, José? I have no boat now . . .”

“No fisherman will help you to go out for the one who steals our living. Anything else,
señor,
you know we would help, but this . . .
nunca
! Never! Only God can help him now, if he's still out there. We can pray for him, of course, but no help for a poacher!”

“Then I shall have to give God a hand.”

“Goodnight,
Señor Capitán.
Go with God!” The rain poured off his peaked cap.

“Good night, Josélito.”

I headed for the hangouts of the foreign exiles wintering in Ibiza.

The Isleno was a tiny restaurant owned by young Americans who served excellent chili-con-carne. There was no one but the owner and a dumpy figure in a fur coat, hunched in one corner. As I stood at the open door, with the rain sluicing down outside, the figure turned to look at me. It was Elmyr the art-collector. He looked wretched. I nodded to him. He bowed, slightly, back at me. The young American owner grinned at me. No help there. “Nice weather for ducks,” I muttered, and turned away again into the night.

On a night like this there was only one other chance. Only the steady boozers would be out in this weather. They would be in the George and Dragon. I ran around the corner into the Calle Mayor and flung myself down the steps of the English pub. All I could see in the lights behind the bar was the dark, curly-haired young bartender, grinning eagerly at me as he fished around for a glass. Otherwise it was too dark to see who was in front of the bar.

“Bass, Tristan?”

“Yeah, put it on the slate, Tim. Pay you tomorrow.”

I slugged at the Bass ale and peered around me. The only other customer was Alf, the London horse-punter. It was the first time I'd ever seen him unaccompanied by a beautiful woman.

Alf nodded at me. He was obviously half-crocked but . . . any port in a storm, and beggars can't be choosers.

“How're you doin', Alf?” I didn't wait for a reply.

“Here, you were in the navy, weren't you? I think you told me . . .”

Alf nodded, his eyes half-closed as he tried to see me.

“I need a hand, Alf. There's a bloke out in this little lot. He was fishing off Formentera.”

“Like a bit o' fishin',” said Alf. “Me and my mates used to go out regular off Brighton pier . . .” Alf's gold tie-pin gleamed in the gloom.

“I want to go look for the bugger.”

“Need a 'and, then, Tris?”

I calmed down a bit. “Well, you know how these bloomin' foreigners are . . .”

“Don't know a puddin' from a pisspot, most of 'em,” slurred Alf.

“Right, well, this bloke's Swiss, and he's a decent sort, only he was at the back of the line when they dished out brains. He left the harbor this morning. I can't get the locals interested . . .”

“Khyfer, that's all they're int'rested in,” Alf observed.

“Yeah. Anyway, Alf, I've got a little three-horse outboard engine onboard this here French boat. She's a lively little sod, and she can claw off from the shore all right. We can pass Jonnie—that's the Swiss bloke—the outboard, and that'll help him off. If not, we might be able to tow him off. It's a fart in a colander's chance, but you never know. I mean we can't leave the poor blighter out there, can we? And you're the only ex-navy bloke I know here, except for Gordon, and he's away.”

Alf slammed his drink on the counter. Unsteadily he grabbed my arm. “Lead on, MacDuff!” he said, and we climbed the steps, me still dripping rainwater and Alf in his gray business suit, gold tie-pin, and shiny brown shoes.

I've heard it said that you can never truly gain experience from reading about it. It may be so; it may not be so—but no one who has
not
ever been in a storm at sea in an eighteen-foot, covered-in dinghy will ever be able to know what it means. If you haven't slammed up and down for fourteen hours, and been thrown yards every two seconds, unable to see anything in the driving rain, unable to drink or eat anything, unable to smoke, hardly able to breathe; numb, cold, wet through, and tired—then thank your lucky stars and rest content, for you know not the depths of utter misery.

We didn't find Jonnie. The chances of doing so in that visibility were nil. It was almost impossible for me to even guess at our position most of the night. Jonnie's boat was never found, nor any wreckage.

It was early afternoon the next day when
Coquette,
with her mainsail almost ripped to shreds and her jib a tattered joke, finally crept into Ibiza harbor again. By the time we had reached the calm water behind the mole, Alf had made me a cup of tea. How he did it, with the boat still jerking around, is yet a complete mystery to me. Neither of us had slept, of course. We had merely relieved each other at the tiller an hour on, an hour off, all night. Off the helm we had crouched, wet through, in the tiny cabin as it bounced around like an elevator gone stark, raving mad.

Now, as I wearily kicked
Coquette
's anchor over her bow, I thanked him. “Ta, Alf.”

His face was haggard. It was bad enough, having a hang-over, but that night . . . “Cor, mate, that was somethin', eh?” he said.

“We'll soon know if he's safe somewhere, Alf. And if not—well, we did our best.”

“Can't do mor'n 'at,” Alf said. His suit was a soggy shambles. His gold tie-pin was gone. His shoes were ruined.

“You did very well, Alf. Thanks a lot,” I said, as the tiny stern fetched up near the mole. “In the navy long, were you?” It had been almost impossible to converse during the wretched night, with the wind howling and the boat smashing around.

“Nah. Only did National Service. You know, the old two-year bit. I tried to get on a ship, but they kept me ashore at Portsmouth Barracks.”

“Portsmouth Barracks?”

“Yeah, di'n' I tell you? I was an Officer's Steward.”

I didn't meet Alf again for several days after that. When I did, it was in the George and Dragon. He was again half-crocked.

“'At was somethin', eh, Tris?” he said. Of course I knew what he meant, but I wanted to talk of other things. My fare was fixed up and I was leaving for England shortly. “You're looking well, Alf,” was all I said “Nice new suit.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm off up to the local nick in a few minutes.” He meant the island jail.

“Oh, what're you going there for?” I asked idly.

“'Aven't you heard? Old Bill—the Spanish police—'ave nicked Elmyr the art-collector. They reckon 'e's screwed 'alf the nobs in Europe an' the States out of bloomin' millions!”

“How'd he do that, Alf?”

“Forgin'.”

“Forging? What, money?”

“Nah, for Chrissake, Tristan—where' you been all your laife?
Pictures!
Forgin' bloomin' Picassos and Whatsisnames. You know, all them Froggie painters. Ol' Elmyr's been doin' the lot!”

I saw in my mind's eye again Elmyr sitting miserably in the tiny, chilly bar on that rainy night a few days back. “So that was it,” I said.

Alf looked at me. “You wanna come up with me? I'm goin' to take 'im some grub. I mean Oi've been to about a dozen of 'is bloomin' parties. Wouldn't want 'im to think I ain't grateful, would I?”

Sing Ho! for a brave and gallant ship, and a fair and fav'ring breeze,

With a bully crew and captain too, to carry me over the seas.

To carry me over the seas, my boys, to my true love far away.

I'm taking a trip on a government ship, ten thousand miles away!

Chorus:
Then blow you winds and blow! A-roving I will go.

I'll stay no more on England's shore to hear sweet music play,

For I'm on the move to my own true love, ten thousand miles away!

Oh it was a summer morning when I last saw my Meg;

She'd a government band around each hand, and another one 'round her leg,

And another one 'round her leg, my boys, as the big ship left the bay.

Goodbye, she said, remember me, when I'm in Botany Bay.

Oh the sun may shine through the London fog, or the river run quite clear,

Or the ocean brine turn into wine, or I forget my beer,

Or I forget my beer, my boys, or the landlord's quarter-day,

But I'll never forget my own true love, ten thousand miles away!

This was sometimes a capstan chantey, but mostly it was a “forebitter,” sung in the rare off-duty moments of ease in sailing ships. Botany Bay was, of course, the penal settlement in Australia to which Britons were exiled in thousands, often for crimes as petty as stealing a loaf of bread.

I suppose that the only valid way to gauge people is by their standards of morality. I don't mean by their own moral standards—many have never had any. They've never had the bishop of Southchester to show them what morality was all about. But all the people I've ever met—and they've ranged from angels almost too good for heaven to monsters almost too diabolical for hell—all have at least acknowledged some standard of morality outside themselves. I've known debt-collectors who thought nothing of nailing a debtor's hands to his own kitchen table, yet could not pass an old lady in the street without pressing a pound-note into her hand.

Alf the London betting man, the hyena of the beach gigolos' stupefied nymphomaniac leavings; the vulture of all the well-off exiles who made up the Nescafé Society of Ibiza; the gremlin of the turbo-prop set, had, by the bishop's standards, absolutely no morals at all. This didn't bother Alf, of course. He was happy and generous—and that, to Alf and his like, was all that ever mattered. In other words, he had his own standards, and he stuck to them. He was consistent. So I accompanied him to Ibiza jail.

We slowly climbed the steep hill up to the walls of the Old Town. Around us peasants pushed heavy bicycles loaded with crates of clucking white hens; one with a small pig lashed, squealing, over the saddle; one with a turtle towed astern by a short rope, upside-down with its shell scraping the pavement. Little old ladies, all in black, hauled crates of cabbages and lettuce up the hill. Younger women carried bundles of clean laundry.

Down the hill came troops of gaily dressed office-workers, headed for the tourist agencies in the lower town; well-suited businessmen going to their real estate offices; bell-bottomed lads with frilly shirts and Beatle haircuts on their way to wait on tables at the hotels along the beach at Figueretas. The Old Town hill at eleven a.m. was a microcosm of the tourist industry and its effects on a community which, until a few years before, had been content and self-supporting. Now it was anxious and becoming avid for that nebulous thing known in the places where many of the tourists hailed from as “the good life.” The faces of the recently emerged businessmen were drawn and worried, as if they were wondering where they would go to spend
their
holidays.

“What did they collar Elmyr for, then, Alf?” I asked him as I huffed and he puffed up the hill.

“Well, it seems 'e didn't break any law in Spain—like none of the forged pictures were sold in this country, and they couldn't just nick 'im for painting a few pictures—so the Franco boys got their heads together when the report came out in
Look
magazine in Yankeeland, and they clobbered 'im for a law they calls . . .” Alf frowned deeply as he tried to remember, “. . . Vagrants and Mal . . .”

“
Vagos y Maleantes?
Vagrants and Undesirables?” I prompted.

“Yeah, tha's it. It seems they can stick anyone in the nick they want to, anytime, under that law. It's a bit laike our ‘Loitering with Intent to Commit a Felony' law—the old “suss” bit. Bloody cheek, if you ask me.”

“He could hardly be a vagrant, Alf. When I went up to his villa with Sissie and the bishop he looked like he had cash growing out of his ears.”

“'E did. 'E was down in the cellar 'alf the time, turnin' out the old Mateuses.”

“Matisses.”

“Well, whatever that Frog bloke's name is.”

Alf stopped for a moment. He was not exactly in Olympic sprinting condition. Neither was I. He went on. “They reckon old Elmyr was knocking out a grands' worth of paintin' before 'e got 'is dressin' gown belt on in the morning. An' by the time the cat was out of the bag 'e 'ad about six of 'is young boyfriends—all paintin' students, see—slappin' on the easy bits. They reckon it was laike Ford's factory down there.”

“Nothing like private enterprise when it shows its good side—getting quality stuff out to the most people at the right price,” I observed. “As for the undesirable bit, hell, he seems to have been keeping half the younger lads on the island going, one way and the other.”

“'Ad more blokes living with 'im than Dorofy Paget 'ad 'orses at Aintree stables,” said Alf as we ducked our heads and passed into a low, whitewashed bar to slake our thirst. Dry work for sailors, walking up hills.

“Belgians, Spanish, Germans; even 'ad one of our blokes—a renter from the Dilly—for a bodyguard,” Alf continued. “'E was a regular bloody young man's employment agency and stud stable combined. 'E never just threw anyone out, neither. Always passed 'em on, old Elmyr did.” Alf raised his beer and slurped it. “'E must 'ave supplied every girl and poufter in the islands wif boyfriends of one sort or another, and they always left Elmyr wif a few bob. Old Elmyr was a good bloke.”

Alf thought deeply for a moment, then continued. “You see that bloke what was livin' with him—English, real toff-looking? Came on a boat from Monaco with some old French bird? What was 'is . . . Nigel, that was it. Nigel?”

“He had a Yank up there, and three others when I was there. What did this Nigel look like, Alf?”

“Bloody film star. Burly bloke. Looked like James Bond.”

“What about him?”

“Well, last time I was in London one of my girlfriends got in a spot of bother. She drew six months in Holloway Prison. So I goes up to see her, don't I? And what do you think I saw there, in the bloomin' visitors' room in Holloway?”

“Not Nigel . . . he wasn't . . .”

“Nah, nothin' like that, but what they had was just one picture on the wall—an advertisement from the Gas Board—and there was Nigel. 'E was modeling on it, see, lying on a bloomin' beach with a girl. Lovely piece of stuff, too. I thought that was funny, the only bloke they had on a picture in a woman's prison bein' Elmyr's boyfriend! I didn't say nothin' to Elsie, though—I mean if it takes Nigel to cheer 'em up, well, bloomin' good luck to 'em, eh?”

“Poor buggers,” I said. “Must be much worse for women.”

Ibiza jail was not anything like Alcatraz or Sing Sing. It hardly looked like a jailhouse at all from the outside, and not much more like one from the inside, either. It occupied part of a building next to the handsome old town hall. Alf and I entered the cool, whitewashed hallway after knocking on a massive wooden door for five minutes, to no avail. At the end of the hallway was a flight of stone steps, at the top of which lounged a collarless, jacketless, carpet-slippered prison guard. He looked as if he was on his way to the bathroom for his weekly shave.

“
Buenos días, señores?
he greeted us politely.

“Mornin'. Elmyr, please?” called Alf, puffing up the steps ahead of me, clutching his package of corned beef sandwiches and six bottles of San Miguel beer.

“El señor artista!”
the guard shouted.

Alf looked around at me. “Excitable, ain't they?” he said.

“Yes, the
señor
artist, please,” I confirmed to the guard.

“Si, señores, inmediatamente! Sargento!”
the guard bellowed for the sergeant.

There was silence, except for a low murmur from somewhere within the building. The guard placed his shaving mug on an ancient table which looked like the Moors had forgotten it when they left the island five centuries before. Suddenly the guard started, as if he'd remembered something. “Ah, yes,
señores,
you will wait please a minute. The sergeant has gone to the mayor's office. He won't be long . . .”

No sooner had the guard said this than the massive wooden doors at the jail entrance slowly creaked partly open, and the sergeant, a small, fat man with a red face and a cloth-covered tray appeared. He made his way carefully up the steps. Speed was not a virtue in Spain; not then, not in prisons, anyway.

“Buenos días, señores?”
The sergeant put the tray down on the table.

“These gentlemen wish to visit the
señor
artist!” said the guard, importantly.

The sergeant almost sprang to attention. “
Si, señores! Sigueme!
Follow me!” He picked up the tray again, carefully. His minion unlocked another massive wooden door. We found ourselves on one side of an iron-railed balcony surrounding three sides of a flower-bedecked courtyard below. Alf and I realized that the sounds we had heard earlier had been rising from the courtyard. We waited and watched as the sergeant carefully laid down his tray again. He selected a large wicker basket from a pile on the balcony, and, as Alf and I stared in wonder, he uncovered the tray and delicately placed its contents in the basket. As he did so he quietly muttered off to himself a list: “
Pâté de foie gras,
eight ounces; asparagus soup, two bowls; duck
à l'orange
with peas and potatoes. Ice for the . . . ah!” He lovingly lifted a large green bottle from the tray and read the label: “Champagne Mouton Rothschild . . .” Another bottle: “Maison Lafitte . . .” And another, smaller bottle: “Perrier water.”

Then he picked up a small box and gazed at its label. Puzzled, he passed it over to Alf. “What's this,
señor
?”

Alf looked at the label. “Looks like bloomin' Chinese to me,” he said, and handed it to me.

I inspected it. The label was finely engraved, like an old English five-pound note. The printing was Cyrillic. “Russian. Probably caviar,” I announced.

The sergeant looked at me quizzically.

“Fish eggs,” I said. “Russian.” I didn't know the Spanish word for caviar.

The sergeant thrust the tiny box into the basket. “
Rusos,
eh?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Strange people, no? Fishes' eggs?” Then he leaned over the balcony and shouted, “Hey, Rubio! Rubio!”

An American voice replied from below. “Yeah! Yagotit?”

Alf and I stared over the balcony at the figure below, as it waited for the sergeant to slowly, carefully lower the basket on a rope.

The man below was, from our foreshortened view, tall; his body, naked from the waist up, was sunbronzed, lithe, and sinewy. His long blond hair was tied in a ponytail at the back. His features were far too classical ever to have gazed on anything as mundane as hard work. His eyes shone a wide grin at us. “Hi, fellas!” he called.

“'Ow're you doin'?” called Alf.

“It's a bum bend in here, but we're doin' OK. You comin' down?” Below the waist he wore a standard pair of faded blue jeans, as favored by the Legion of the Lost Ones; a wide leather belt (which surprised me, given the surroundings); and a pair of locally made canvas-and-rope slippers. He was cleaner than the sergeant, the guard, and me.

As the basket finally reached the ground at the blond youth's feet, Alf called, “We come up to see Elmyr!”

Blondie picked up the basket. “OK, fellas, I'll tell him!” He then disappeared.

The sergeant hauled up the rope and stood again almost at attention. I looked at him quizzically.

“Wait,
señores,
” he said. “The
señor
artist's servant has gone to inform him that you are here.”

Alf's Spanish was not very good. I translated for him.

“Blimey, they do all right in 'ere, eh?” he said. “Nothin' like bloody Holloway!”

The blond lad was back below us shortly. “OK, you guys come on down! OK,
sargento!
”

The sergeant sprang into action and led us along the balcony to a barred gate at the top of a flight of worn stone steps. He unlocked the gate, and Alf and I passed through and down the steps. At the bottom we emerged into the courtyard, bright in sunlight in the center, shady under the balcony, surrounded on three sides by whitewashed, flower-bedecked walls, all splashes of red and gold and purple. On the other side of the courtyard was a line of wide doors, giving into large, cool cells, each with a small, barred window in its wall. In the shade was a group of about twenty-five long-haired males. We knew they were males by the scraggy beards that many of them sported, and the half-naked dirtiness of the others.

The tall blond was at the bottom of the steps to greet us. I guessed he was no more than nineteen or so. “Peace, brothers,” he said. “Step right this way.”

He turned abruptly as for a long moment I stared at the contrast between his spotless cleanliness and the scruffiness of the other inmates lounging on the ground all around. As he led us along, he spoke over his shoulder. “British, huh?”

“London,” muttered Alf. “'Ow long you been here, mate?”

“Arr, they busted me for sleepin' on a goddamn bench. I was freaked out with a chick over on Figueretas two weeks ago, and they found my stash. But I'm OK, Elmyr's cool. I guess I'm doin' better in this joint than I was outside.”

I tried not to be too obvious as we passed the group of pale, bearded hippies lounging in the shade. It would have been difficult not to observe more closely, as we passed them, their air of absolute resignation and yet a sort of sniffing disdain as Alf, in his suit, passed by. I was all right, it seemed. They looked right through me. It's not easy, or very rewarding, to despise a pink Breton sailing jacket, all torn and salt-stained. But to an observer it's a distinct advantage to know that he himself is not being observed. Then he can be as objective as it is possible for him to be. I took in their studied lack of involvement; these essences of individuality, and in a flash saw just how alike they were, like peas in a pod. None of them appeared to be over twenty-five or so, and a few were probably much younger.

As we passed out of the shade of the guards' balcony, through a low arch, and into a smaller sunlit courtyard, I saw Elmyr.

From the time I had last seen him, hunched miserably in his fur coat in the scruffy little chili bar on that rainy night a week or so before, this was an unbelievable transformation. He was bareheaded, the sun gleaming on his false black hair, his real hair graying over his ears. He wore dark horizontal glasses, a huge horizontal smile of welcome, a sleeveless orange silk sports shirt, white shorts, beautifully polished leather sandals, and his Cartier wrist-watch. Only the gold monocle was missing.