We Joined The Navy Page 21

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Would I,’ growled the Scarlet Woman.

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘White Lady, Rum Punch or . . .’

  ‘Got any Scotch and soda?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Not too much soda’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘Before you go, have you got a cigarette?’

  ‘Certainly. Virginia this end, Turkish the far end.’ Colin Stacforth held out his cigarette-case. The Scarlet Woman was impressed.

  ‘You’re pretty smooth,’ she growled. ‘What you doing tonight?’

  ‘I’ll get you something to drink.’

  The noise level rose as the party gathered momentum. At first scattered and subdued, like the earliest arrivals of a symphony orchestra tentatively tuning their instruments, the sounds of the party merged and swelled as though more and more instruments had arrived, found the right key and taken up the strain in sympathy, until they achieved that final sustained roar, that unmistakable babble of a large number of people contained in a group and obeying that same instinct which once caused their ancestors to assemble by companies in the treetops to gibber and howl at the rising moon.

  Raymond Ball was shouting with an elderly man and his very pretty daughter. Raymond Ball was persevering with the elderly man in the hope of being introduced to his daughter. As The Bodger had predicted, Raymond was not having any difficulty in making conversation with the old boy. His problem now was to stop him.

  ‘You know!’ bawled the elderly man. ‘It’s a damned good show this ship coming out here like this! Reminds us all out here that we’ve got a Navy! Yes! You should come out here more often! Why don’t you come out here more often?’

  ‘Well. . .’

  ‘I’ll tell you! Dollars! The Almighty Dollar! We can’t afford it! And why can’t we afford it?’

  ‘It’s…’

  ‘I’ll tell you! We can’t afford it because we’re spending so much on rearmament! That’s what it is! Rearmament!’

  ‘But, Daddy, if we spent less on rearmament we’d be even less likely to have a ship out here.’

  ‘Be quiet, Louise, you’re as bad as your mother used to be! By the way, my boy, you haven’t met my daughter! This is my daughter Louise! I didn’t catch your name, my boy?’

  ‘Raymond Ball, sir.’

  ‘Good, I must leave you for a moment! I see an old friend of mine over there and I must catch him before he goes. You look after this young fellow, Louise!’

  ‘This is a lovely party,’ Louise said. ‘Oh, do look, there’s a boy on the floor. I hope he hasn’t hurt himself?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t hurt himself. He’s used to it. Can I get you another drink?’

  ‘No, thank you, this one is quite enough. They’re terribly strong, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. You have to be careful otherwise you’ll get terribly drunk on them.’

  ‘That boy on the floor looks drunk already.’

  ‘Oh, no, I expect he’s just tired.’

  ‘Shouldn’t he go to bed then?’

  ‘I expect someone will take him soon. Now tell me . . .’

  ‘Are you playing in the cricket match tomorrow?’

  ‘No, I’m not actually playing but I expect I’ll go and watch.’

  ‘I love cricket! If you watch them playing it here, they look really happy. Have you got a good team?’

  ‘We have one or two good players. You see that tall dark chap over there talking to the girl in the red dress? He’s very good. I expect he’ll play for the Navy one day.’

  ‘Will he?’

  The elderly man came back as Louise was beginning to look at Paul with interest and Raymond Ball was wishing he had never mentioned him.

  ‘There you are! Louise, the Governor has been kind enough to invite me to dinner tonight so you’ll have to take this young man home and give him something to eat. Take the car, old Pertwee will give me a lift home. Does that suit you, young man?’

  ‘I’d be delighted, sir!’

  ‘You must look at our bamboos,’ Louise said.

  Raymond Ball looked up sharply. Now what does she mean by that, he asked himself. He looked at Louise again. She really was a most delicious specimen.

  ‘Are they like nutmeg trees?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The hard work put in by Knowles and Marine Stubble began to show itself. Strangers bumped into one another, apologised, and fell to talking as though they had been at school together. The Governor’s party, who had started by standing remotely at one end sipping White Ladies, now circulated through the crowd. The Governor himself was exchanging stories with the P.M.O. while his Aide-de-Camp was trying, unsuccessfully, to break into a group where The Bodger was entertaining his fiancée; the Governor’s Aide-de-Camp had lost two fiancées at cocktail parties in H.M. Ships and he knew the danger signals. Michael and Isaiah Nine Smith were picking George Dewberry up off the deck and getting him to bed.

  The Corporal of the Gangway, who was a Plymouth Brother, stood by the quartermaster’s lobby and looked scornfully aft.

  ‘Anointing their throats with hell fire, that’s what they’re doing,’ he said to the Marine Bugler, with relish.

  ‘I could do with a drop of that meself,’ said the Marine Bugler wistfully. ‘They doan’t half seem to be enjoying themselves.’

  ‘They’ll go the way of the rest,’ the Corporal of the Gangway said firmly. ‘Slipping down the broad high road to damnation, the lot of ‘em.’

  ‘Oh, I doan’t know. A bit of a shindig does no one any harm.’ The Marine Bugler was a Wesleyan.

  ‘Ah. You wait till it’s time to go. Till some of them women try to get down the gangway. Then you’ll see what I mean, lad.’

  The Corporal of the Gangway was a man of experience. When the time came for the guests to go, the scene was indeed diverting.

  Ooooh Bodger!’ squealed one girl, who had been drinking rum punches faster than The Bodger could provide them. ‘Those steps! You’ll have to carry me! No, I can’t, you’ll have to carry me. No, I can’t face them and I daren’t even look at them or I’ll be sick. You’ll have to--don’t prod me, Jane, you cat! I think I’ll just give this little boy a kiss before I go. Come here,’ she said to the Cadet of the Watch. ‘But I’m sure he needs someone to kiss him. He looks lonely. I’m sure you’re beastly to him, Bodger. No, you’ll have to carry me. . . . No!’

  The Gunnery Officer and the Communications Officer were trying to stop another girl going up a ladder into the after gunroom where Michael and Isaiah Nine Smith, whose blasphemy could just be heard, were slinging George Dewberry’s hammock and putting him into it.

  ‘But Guns, please, don’t be such a prude. Oh, what lovely language! I’m not going to stay long, I just want to see how they do it. I’ve always wondered. Can’t I just peep? Just a teeny . . . weeny . . . peep--hup! Whoops! Pardon my French!’

  The Commander, who disliked cocktail parties personally but attended each one because all successful naval officers attended them, strode around the quarterdeck tapping officers on the shoulder with his telescope and muttering to them to get their guests ashore. The band played the National Anthem to intimate that the entertainment was now over and they wanted to get to their supper. The stewards were clearing up the tables by emptying the contents of glasses down their throats. The D.B. Chief Stoker appeared at the forward end of the quarterdeck and summed up the situation. The party was over.

  But it took time before the last of the guests was escorted and, in the case of one excited young lady, carried kicking by the Corporal of the Gangway down to the boats. At last it was done. The Bodger and his mates stepped back and wiped their brows.

  ‘My God!’ The Bodger said. ‘What does Guns do to that stuff! It must start off as normal liquor but after he and that satellite of his Knowles have had a go at it we might just as well be drink
ing neat dynamite. One sip of that rum punch nearly blew the top of my head off.’

  ‘Still,’ said the Communications Officer, ‘I can die at rest now. Did you hear what that woman in the earrings told Dickie to do with his telescope?’

  The cricket match at Barbados was an annual fixture and it was played under special rules. Every member of the fielding side except the wicket-keeper was called upon to bowl two overs; each innings therefore lasted a maximum of twenty overs. A batsman retired when he had made thirty runs, and a boundary, a wicket, or indeed an incident of any kind was the signal for planter’s punch to be brought out on trays from the pavilion. The rig for the teams was white shorts and shirts but hats were optional and according to personal preference; the rules stated that a player’s hat could be anything but a cricket cap. Barsetshire had never within the memory of anyone on board won a match, and when the ship’s team arrived at the ground they understood why; they saw that they would have to play not only against the opposing side but also against the ground, the crowd, and the calypso steel band.

  The ground sloped towards the sea and was enclosed by a low cliff which dropped down to the beach, a row of tall palms, a deep ditch and the road on the fourth side. The wicket was concrete covered with matting and provided as good a batting surface as any in the world but the outfield was tough, slippery grass broken up by pot-holes, ridges and heaps of stones. The pavilion was a structure of four poles supporting a roof of thatched palm leaves and it was placed on the far side of the ditch so that an incoming batsman descended into the ditch, scrambled up the other side and picked his way between stones and pot-holes to the wicket. A Scoreboard was nailed to one of the four posts, but it was only kept up to date when the home team were batting. The feet of the spectators marked the boundaries but four runs were only automatically granted when the ball actually hit a spectator. During the home side’s innings the boundary contracted and the younger members of the crowd risked life and limb to impede the ball; when the visiting team were batting, the boundary expanded and the crowd opened to provide a passage for the ball and the fielder.

  Except for a loyal group of British residents in deck chairs by the pavilion, the crowd were entirely West Indian. They made a brilliant border round the ground of red, yellow and blue shirts and dresses, black faces, yellow straw hats and white teeth. They laughed, cheered, joked and shouted to each other across the pitch. They had come prepared to cheer their team home; if will power and cheering could make an opposing team drop catches and lose wickets, the home side were already on the way to winning the game.

  But the most formidable opposition a visiting team had to face was the calypso steel band. They squatted in a circle near the pavilion and their only instruments were petrol and kerosene tins with the bottoms heated and peined in parts to give out different notes when struck. The steel band were playing when the visiting team arrived and they played throughout the match, being led by a man in a suit of flame-red pyjamas known as ‘Firedrake Fred’ who sang a running calypso commentary on the play.

  The Bodger, who was umpiring, in a long white coat and a grey bowler, went out to the pitch with the other umpire while the captains tossed. The steel band played ‘With Catlike Tread They Creep Upon Their Prey’ in time to the umpire’s footsteps.

  Cartwright, Barsetshire’s captain, won the toss. He was wearing a deerstalker decorated with fishing flies. He chose to bat.

  ‘The Englishmen, they have won the toss,

  In this fair land of Barbados .. .’

  sang Firedrake Fred.

  ‘They are going to bat, all can see,

  We must bowl them out with alacritee’

  The fielding side came out to the ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ and were followed by Paul and Pontius the Pilot, Barsetshire’s opening pair (in straw boater and flight deck beret) to the ‘Entry of the Queen of Sheba.’

  Paul’s first ball was a slow full toss on the leg side. He caught it in the middle of the bat and struck it hard and head high towards square leg. The Bodger and square leg threw themselves flat on the ground. The ball hummed over the heads of the crowd, cannoned off a palm tree, and rebounded back into the field to midwicket who hurled himself sideways to catch the ball before it touched the ground. The crowd leapt and hugged themselves. The steel band played ‘Let’s Have Another One.’ The first round of planter’s punch came out from the pavilion.

  ‘Well held, sir’ said the elderly man whom Raymond Ball had met at the party, who was sitting with his daughter Louise and Raymond Ball by the pavilion.

  ‘The first man he go to a very good catch,

  Just nine more and we win the match...’

  sang Firedrake Fred.

  Paul’s place was taken by the Fresh Water Tanky in a sombrero who drove his first ball straight at the bowler. The bowler took the catch with a triumphant yell, back somersaulted and stood up holding the ball and grinning. The crowd howled. The steel band doubled the tempo. The planter’s punch returned.

  ‘Never mind’ said the elderly man in the deck chair, ‘at least they’re playing the ball. The ball hasn’t beaten the bat yet.’

  ‘Another man go down down down

  And give the happy bowler great renown . . .’

  The next batsman was Cartwright. He made a leisurely crossing of the ditch, walked slowly to the wicket, took guard, calmly surveyed the placing of the field, settled his deerstalker more firmly on his head, and blocked or ignored the rest of the over. The crowd began slow clapping. The steel band played ‘So Tired.’ The ice melted in the planter’s punch.

  ‘That’s more like it’ said the elderly man.

  Cartwright scored steadily in ones and twos but he was given little support. Pontius the Pilot was bowled by a slow ball which hit the wicket on its fourth bounce. Mr Piles was given out l.b.w. when a rising ball removed the mortar-board from his head, and Able Seaman Froggins, wearing a knotted handkerchief, hit one six over the palm trees and was caught next ball by an old lady in the crowd who accepted the ball on her lap. The rest of Barsetshire’s batsmen were disconcerted by the small boys who capered and gesticulated behind the bowler’s arm, by the steel band’s drum roll and crescendo as the bowler ran up to the wicket, by the concerted jump and yell of the fielders as the ball left the bowler’s hand, and by the wicket-keeper who crouched over the stumps muttering ‘You going to get a duck’ not as a question but as statement of fact as the batsmen attempted his stroke. The Barsetshire innings closed for fifty-five runs, of which thirty-five runs had been contributed by Cartwright who reached a total of twenty-nine and retired with a six on to the beach.

  During the planter’s punch interval, the steel band gave a recital conducted by Firedrake Fred. The Barsetshire team were astonished at the quality of the music the steel band could make from old petrol drums. They played minuets and marches, carols and calypsos, serenades and sambas, and romances and ragtime. They put fragments of tunes together to build up an intricate melodic structure which Firedrake Fred allowed to reach its height and then demolished with a gesture. The parts were properly orchestrated with counterpoint and contrast. Soloists made their entries faultlessly. Sometimes they sounded like the drums of a military band and sometimes like the percussion section of a large orchestra; they could imitate the pizzicato of a violin, the throbbing of a bassoon, and the strumming of a guitar. The band enjoyed playing and the crowd enjoyed listening to them and they made the liveliest, most genuine music the Barsetshire team had ever heard.

  Cartwright opened the bowling for Barsetshire. He normally opened the bowling for Barsetshire’s official cricket team, and he stood head and shoulders like a colossus over the other bowlers in the match. He was allowed twelve balls in the match and, bowling downhill and down wind, he determined to make every ball count.

  His first pitched short, sailed over the skiing cap of Chief Electrician Pocock, who was keeping wicket, eluded the Chief G.I.’s outstretched topee on the boundary at fine leg, and landed first bounce on the
beach near the sea. The Bodger signalled six byes reluctantly and held up play for the arrival of the planter’s punch. Cartwright tightened his jaw, swung his arm rapidly in a windmill motion, and prepared himself for his second ball.

  Cartwright had been the first visiting batsman ever to have retired voluntarily on that pitch and he was now the first bowler ever to have bowled six byes. The crowd warmed to him and cheered his every move. The steel band paid him the supreme compliment of a drum roll as he ran up to the wicket.

  This encouragement was a gross tactical error. It gave Cartwright the spur he needed. His second ball scattered stumps, bails, ball and bat in a wide spray. The crowd were dumbfounded. The British residents applauded. The steel band played a few disconsolate chords in a minor key. The Bodger called for planter’s punch.

  ‘Well bowled, sir!’ called Louise’s father. His eyes sparkled. It was the first piece of real cricket he had seen that afternoon. It reminded him of cricket as he had played it long ago at home with his brothers, in a setting of parasols, strawberries and cream, horses under the chestnut trees, and Victoria on the throne. Cartwright’s easy, powerful action recalled other bowlers he had seen, Maurice Tate at Hove, and Larwood and Voce at Trent Bridge. The old man was roused by the gasp which followed after Cartwright’s second wicket, which was a duplicate of the first.

  During Cartwright’s two overs, while Paul bowled from the other end, the home side lost five wickets for ten runs. Four were bowled by Cartwright and the fifth was run out by the Captain’s steward, Knowles, who unexpectedly trapped the ball in his glengarry at cover point and threw the wicket down. Paul did not take a wicket but gave away only four runs.

  ‘Tragedee, tragedee, gentlemen this is tragedee,’ sang Firedrake Fred.