Good Enough For Nelson (22 page)

The Bodger felt that he really ought to know, but he could not put a name to the face, and neither could anybody else.

‘Well, that was from an actual TV interview of the Minister of State for the Navy ...’ Superjack waited for the College’s great bellow of laughter to die down. ‘... Speaking on independent television some four months ago. He was, in fact, trying to explain why his Government had just announced the third set of cuts in defence in six months, when they had assured everybody that the defence cuts they made at the beginning of the year would be the last for at least twelve months. We showed it first without the sound, so that you could concentrate on the facial and body gestures. You can see that there is a language of the face and body, much more subtle and much more revealing than most of us ever guess. Now we’ll show it again, and bring back the sound.’

It was little more convincing, but not much. Now that Superjack had pointed them out, his audience easily saw through the verbal fencing, the evasions, the qualifications, the attempts to justify the unjustifiable. When the unseen interviewer said ‘Some people are saying that the Government’s attitude is dishonest and short-sighted’ and the Minister replied ‘No I don’t think the Government’s attitude is dishonest and shortsighted,’ there was another great roar of derisive laughter.

‘Not a pretty sight, was it?’ said Superjack. ‘Notice how he tried the repetition dodge and you all laughed. It failed because his tone of voice, and even his facial expression, was not as confident as the interviewer’s voice. You must not only repeat the words, you must also reproduce the tone of voice, exactly, so that it’s a mirror image, like a ball bouncing truly and strongly off a wall.

‘Now you may think you’ll never be interviewed by TV or radio or the newspapers. You’re wrong. This isn’t just for admirals and captains and ministers. It might happen to you at any time, you might suddenly be somewhere when something has happened. In such cases, think over what the interviewer is going to ask you. He will almost always semi-rehearse it with you, and tell you what sort of thing he is going to ask. Think about it, and prepare what you are going to say in your mind. Then stand up, speak up, and shut up.

‘Don’t relax your guard until you see the reporter physically driving off in his car. Perhaps this applies more to newspaper interviews, but any reporter will tell you he quite often gets his best story and his best quotes when the chap being interviewed thought the interview was over. He’s said his piece, he’s said good-bye, he’s walking the reporter to the front gate, it’s all over. But he lingers, talking, as people do and he often gives the reporter more information in those last few moments, at the garden gate, than he ever did inside the house.’

Superjack had them all in the palm of his hand, there was no doubt about it. He was a superb communicator, a masterly exponent of his own theories of presentation. The Bodger realised that Superjack’s was the kind of address the modern OUTs enjoyed most. Yet Superjack himself still had an engaging modesty.

‘Aw shucks, Bodger,’ He said, shrugging off The Bodger’s compliments later. ‘It’s my job now.’

‘It seems a strange job for an NO.’

‘Lord, Bodger, you find ex-NOs in all sorts of jobs now.’

‘You mean golf club secretary and all that?’

‘Lord no, you’re a bit of out of date with that. No, they’re clerks of racecourses, company secretaries, advertising account executives, managers of holiday firms, vineyard owners, nothing menial you understand, nothing hoi-polloi-ish. But still, not the old parish councillor, vegetable-trainer, dog-walker, retired admiral image either. Not the little white-washed seaside cottage with pinks and roses growing round the door, and the quarterdeck manner and the blue blazer either.’

The Bodger had to admit that Superjack had the power to arouse the most evocative series of mental images.

‘It’s the same with the ex-chiefs and POs. In fact they’re even more confident. You could almost say there’s been a transfer of confidence in the Navy from the officers to the senior rates. While the officers are wondering what sort of Navy it’s going to be like in the future, the chiefs and POs are seizing opportunities with both hands. When they come out of the Navy these days they are not about to keep country pubs or be a sub-postmaster or a commissionaire. Not these days, mate. You go to a light engineering firm in the Home Counties making, say, castors and fittings for armchairs and sofas. Nine times out of ten you’ll see an ex-chief petty officer on the board, or an ex-ERA as technical director. It’s only the officers these days who wonder who they are and where they’re going. Anyway, Bodger, it’s been nice to come back here. It’s good of you to put up with us. I don’t think you need any advice on presentation from me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘After all, to reach four rings you must have conducted a pretty fair campaign in the naval media yourself!’

‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger lay back in his bath and rolled the strange words around on his tongue. Having never met the phrase before, he now heard it on all sides. A crisis of identity at the Britannia Royal Naval College. It seemed a contradiction in terms, as improbable as that massive Britannia figurehead on the parade ground suddenly losing faith in her upheld trident.

‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger turned on the hot tap with his right big toe. If the words had any meaning at all they surely went to the very nub of his job at the College. They might even provide a clue to a problem which had come to occupy The Bodger’s thoughts increasingly in the weeks since he had joined the College: what sort of Navy were they preparing these young men for? And were these the right young men? Perhaps they were getting the wrong ones and teaching them the wrong things?

‘Crisis of identity’. There was too much hot water. The Bodger turned off the hot tap and turned on the cold, paddling the rush of hotter water up his right hand. Perhaps the Navy itself was suffering from a crisis of identity. What did we want a Navy for? We could no longer afford the world-wide influence at sea which we had enjoyed for about three centuries. The price of Admiralty was much too high. But if we could not be a blue-water Navy, should we be a shoal-water Navy? Maybe we should just concentrate on guarding the oil fields and oil rigs of the North Sea.

‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger said the words aloud. In that high-roofed bathroom they reverberated around in the rafters, like a choral chant in a cathedral. Did the
pre-war
College suffer misgivings? Surely not.

‘Crisis of identity’. The Bodger sang the words, to the tune of
La donna è mobile
.

Julia thumped on the door. ‘Breakfast time!’

After breakfast and divisions, at Polly’s briefing, The Bodger asked ‘Do we ever keep any statistics about OUTs?’

‘
Statistics
, sir?’ Polly looked as though she had just said ‘unmentionables’. ‘There’s the Prof.’s exam results and tutors’ reports and all that, sir?’

‘No, I mean
real
statistics. Where they come from, what schools they went to, who their parents were, and all that?’

‘Oh no, sir, I don’t think we’ve got anything like that,’ Polly said, as though the very suggestion of anything like that was somehow sneaky.

‘By the way what’s happened to Scratch this morning?’

‘Oh, he went on his division’s yacht race round the Mewstone on Wednesday, sir, and caught a chill. He’s had to stay in bed. There’s rounds of all the divisional blocks and cabins this morning, sir.’

At eleven The Bodger set off, followed by a small rounds party, to tour the part of the College behind the main visible facade, where there were several individual mazes of smaller offices, rows of cabins, some dormitories, bathrooms and gunrooms, each allocated to a different division. Pre-war, each term of cadets had led its own hermetically sealed off existence in its own segment of the building and never had any contact or association with any other term. No cadet even talked to one of another term, although brothers were allowed to walk up and down the quarterdeck with each other for a few minutes on Sunday mornings after church service. Now, The Bodger could see that there were fewer dormitories and many more small cabins. There were photographs and transistor radios on the chests, posters on the bulkheads. But, as he went round, The Bodger could still catch a whiff of that old repressive atmosphere. It still lurked there, in that warren of small rooms, tucked away out of sight, but never dying, that old, stem, unforgiving, draconian heart of the Britannia College. Though only beating faintly, it was still there, and The Bodger felt a chill at his own heart when he remembered the unheated pre-war dormitories the cold salt water baths, the enforced silences, the official beatings, the constant inspections, the frantic changes of rig and the furious doublings, up the hill and down the hill, along the corridors and back, up the stairs and down again, so as to be present and correct somewhere else in an impossibly short space of time. The Bodger recalled vividly, with a pain that still had the power to hurt him, the fiercely loyal friendships, the shattering betrayals, the resentments born of isolation, the injustices borne without a murmur, the hero-worshipping and the bullying, the ostracisms and the ferocious physical hurt of punishment. Through long and close acquaintanceship, a Dartmouth term came to know each other more thoroughly, through and through, than perhaps it was healthy or proper for young men to know each other. Such a claustrophobic existence, of closed doors and closed minds, encouraged secrecies, from surreptitious smoking to occasional buggery, although this last was always more feared and commented upon by outsiders than actually practised inside the College; with cadets of different ages so rigidly segregated and having so little unsupervised spare time, the practical difficulties were often too great.

The earlier origins of an OUT might or might not be shrouded in mystery, but once he had arrived at the College he was subjected to a bleak, minutely-detailed official scrutiny in which his every bodily and mental characteristic was meticulously recorded. The walls of the Hon. John’s divisional office, for example, were covered with state boards, recording in different colours and symbols his division’s ages, heights, weights, nationalities, and physical state, with different tabs for vaccinations, inoculations, dental treatment, boat proficiency tests, swimming tests, examinations passed, trips to sea, vacation projects, syllabus, type of entry, branch and specialisation. From the boards a glance, or rather close searching, would reveal what every officer had done, what he was doing, and what he would be doing, while he was at the College.

The Bodger peered at the nearest board. ‘Tell me, do you ever do any research into the backgrounds of your division?’ ‘Oh no, sir.’ The Hon. John looked totally mystified.

‘You never, say, vary your lectures on leadership to suit the various entries you’re getting?’

‘Lectures on leadership, sir?’ The Hon. John looked, if it was possible, even more at a loss.

‘You
do
give lectures on leadership?’

‘Oh no, sir.’

The Bodger tried again. ‘When I was a DO here, I used to tell them all about not backing horses ante-post and drawing trumps and, not being too free with the Admiral’s daughter unless I really meant it … ’

‘Oh
that
, sir!’ A smile of pure enlightenment broke out on the Hon. John’s face. ‘What we call the facts of life. Yes sir, we do that, as a matter of course.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

The officer in charge of the next division was Lieutenant Commander Wright who was known, like many of his surname in the Navy, as Shiner. Shiner Wright was a very short and very round and very ebullient man. He had been sub of the gunroom in the old
Superb
. Like Charlie Charleshaughton, he had his own divisional slogan or war-cry, ‘Fingers out, Frobishers’. Although the walk from the Hon. John’s office to Shiner’s took less than two minutes, the College jungle drum had already spoken, and Shiner knew The Bodger was interested in statistics.

‘I keep some tables of figures, sir, listing them by schools, family background, what part of the country they come from, and all that. I’ve also tried to keep some record of their progress when they leave the College, how many drop out, and so on, but of course I haven’t had time really to get much data on that. Maybe it’s a little snobbish of me to be interested in their schools...’

‘Not at all.’ The Bodger was vastly interested. ‘After all, we make out a syllabus, the Navy plans its advertising, money is allocated, opinions are formed, jobs are filled, speeches are made in Parliament and decisions made in the Ministry, all based on projections of the type of boy we want. We all have our opinions and everybody always has his say about training, but it seems to me nobody is finding out what sort of bloke we’re actually
getting
.’

‘Well, sir, in statistical terms, my sample is very small, you must understand, and a professional statistician would probably say it was highly dangerous to draw any conclusions from it. But the Navy is a special case, sir, and one must start somewhere, so in statistical terms we can ignore a lot of the variables. If you were doing a survey of white rhinos, sir, it wouldn’t matter what the other coloured rhinos did or what the other animals generally were up to.’

‘And we’re dealing with a very rare white rhino?’

‘Oh indeed, sir, we’re dealing with young men who not only wanted to join the Navy but actually went ahead and did it. Statistically, they represent a
minute
proportion of the population. If you included
everybody
in the Navy, not just OUTs, even they would only represent a proportion of less than one in
five hundred
of the total population of this country. But one thing leaps out and hits you: there are many less public school boys joining now than there used to be. It’s not a constant downward trend, some years it drops dramatically, others it jumps up again for no particular reason, but steadily, over the years, there’s been an increase of boys from grammar schools, direct grant schools, state secondary schools, and now some from polytechnics and colleges of technology.’