All The Nice Girls (7 page)

‘I’ll take it,’ said Dagwood impulsively.

Molly was more practical. ‘It’s four pounds a week,’ she said cautiously. ‘That includes water and rates but not electricity.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘When would you like to move in?’

‘Now.’

‘Oh, but there are lots of things we’ve got to do first! We have to get the electricity man to read the meter . . .’

‘What for?’

‘You want to start off with a clean sheet, don’t you? You don’t want to have to pay for the electricity we’ve already used this quarter.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes. Oh yes, you’d better get the electricity man.’

Molly was slowly realising that Dagwood was even more inexperienced as a tenant than she herself was as a landlady. ‘You’ll need some coal,’ she said. ‘Shall I order some for you?’

‘Yes please, if you would.’

‘What sort of coal do you want?’

Dagwood was nonplussed. To him coal was coal, and there an end.

‘Is there more than one kind?’

Molly giggled. ‘There’s lots of kinds. You leave it to me. I’ll get you some. Now how about food? We can supply you with milk and eggs from the farm here.’

‘That would be splendid,’ said Dagwood, vaguely.

‘How much milk do you want a day?’ Molly asked mischievously, waiting to see what Dagwood would say.

‘A quart?’ Dagwood suggested, experimentally.

Molly burst out laughing.

‘Is that a lot?’

‘Well, it’s rather a lot for one person! Tell you what, we’ll say a pint a day to start with and see how you get on. How about a daily woman? The wife of one of our men can come in two days a week and do for you, if you’d like that?’

‘Now that’s a good idea,’ said Dagwood. ‘I shall probably need a bit of professional help.’ Dagwood was gradually becoming aware that there was more to taking a residence, even a Tithe Barn, than merely walking in with the landlady and saying you’ll have it.

‘Will you bring your own linen?’

‘Eh?’

Molly repressed a smile. ‘Sheets, etcetera.’

‘Oh of course yes, sheets . . . I’ve got to go home anyway and pick up my car. I’ll get sheets and things while I’m there. I’ll manage the sheets. You leave that to me.’

‘That’s all right then. Shall we say you’ll take it from next Saturday?’

‘O.K. I probably won’t arrive until Sunday.’

‘Oh, by the way, I’d better have your name.’

‘Jones. Lieutenant Dagwood Jones, Royal Navy.’

‘Gosh, this’ll be the first time we’ve had a naval officer in this village! We’ll expect you on Sunday then, Lieutenant Jones?’

‘Not Lieutenant Jones. Dagwood.’

‘All right, Dagwood,’ said Molly, smiling.

Dagwood returned to Oozemouth glowing all over with a sense of accomplishment. ‘Good lad,’ said Daphne, when she heard of Dagwood’s decision. ‘You’ll have the time of your life.’

Daphne’s opinion was not shared by Dagwood’s mother when Dagwood went down to Buckinghamshire to see her and collect some sheets.

Dagwood’s mother had been known to the family as Dame for as long as Dagwood could remember. She had been left a widow when Dagwood’s father, a banker, had died exactly a year after he retired to the large cottage where Dame now lived with her black labrador Sammy. She had married late in life, when she was nearly forty and she had married, in her family’s opinion, rather below her. The Earl, her grandfather, had at last silenced all family opposition by saying, or rather shouting at the top of his voice, ‘If this banker fellow Jones doesn’t marry Rosemary, who the devil will?’ Dame was a vague lady who still had only the haziest idea of what her son did for a living. She knew that he was in the Navy but she had an almost Elizabethan attitude towards the status of naval officers; she looked upon them as superior artisans, above a head coachman but definitely below a butler. She could see Dagwood (a nickname he had irremovably acquired at the age of six months, his baptismal name being Hugh) in ruff, pinked doublet and sword, hailing ‘Sink me the ship, Master Gunner, split her in twain!’ from the poop-deck, but her imagination baulked at the idea of Dagwood actually labouring in the waists, as the Master Gunner. The concept of Dagwood as an Electrical Officer defeated her entirely; she knew as much of electricity as she did of linear B. She lived in mortal terror of her own electric kettle. Dagwood often wondered how he had ever come to join the Navy (the Interview Board had asked him that very question and he had been unable to frame an intelligent reply).

Unknown to Dagwood, his father and Dame had given a great deal of thought to the choice of a career for him. They had dismissed the Army: the boy was too intelligent for that. Yet he was probably not intelligent enough for the Law or Accountancy. He was too honest for the City or the Church and too squeamish for Medicine. They had not considered the R.A.F. at all; they would as soon have thought of apprenticing the lad as a garage mechanic. It had to be the Navy, but Dame had been uneasily conscious that none of her family, not Lionel, the baron who carried the Coeur de Lion’s standard before the walls of Acre, nor Louis, the comte who carried the china commode before the Sun King at Versailles, and least of all Charles, Bishop, Gonfalioner and Captain General of the Holy Church of the Emperor Charles V who could drink forty bottles of Bordeaux wine (one for each day in Lent) at a sitting, would have approved.

‘Hello dear,’ said Dame, giving Dagwood a kiss and a look which reminded him that he must get a haircut. ‘Have you come from Oozemouth?’ It might have been thought an unnecessary question, considering that Dagwood had telephoned specifically to say that he was coming, but Dame had a great respect for travellers. She felt an almost medieval concern for journeys. She herself went down to the village to do her shopping carrying a loaded stick and holding Sammy back on a slip-leash, as though she expected at any minute to be set upon by a gang of starving soldiers returning from the Wars of the Roses.

‘Yes, Dame,’ Dagwood answered absently.

‘Did you say that you were going to live in a flat, dear?’

‘That’s right. It’s a tithe barn actually.’

‘It doesn’t sound very comfortable, Dagwood. Are you sure it isn’t very damp?’

‘Oh it’s fully furnished and everything, Dame. It’s got a great big stove in it.’

Dame remembered another important point. ‘I do hope you’re going to get enough to eat. Who’s doing the cooking?’

‘I am.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Dame, anxiously.

‘It shouldn’t be all that difficult,’ Dagwood said, with more confidence than he felt. He had enough imagination to be able to visualise the quite probable results of his first efforts - the smoke, the vicious sizzling noise, and possibly Molly’s alarmed face hovering outside the window, wondering whether her Tithe Barn was safe. ‘I’ve never been one for very much breakfast, as you know. So coffee and toast and marmalade is enough for that. I get lunch free at the yard. So the only real meal to worry about is supper. I expect I’ll have steak or scrambled eggs for that. If I get fed up I can always go down to the local and have beer and sandwiches. It should be all right, Dame, don’t worry.’

Dame was still not convinced. ‘It doesn’t sound very nourishing,’ she said.

‘If you’re really worried Dame, you can help by lending me some extra crockery and things. I’ve got a list here. A spare electric fire if you’ve got it. And sheets, they’re very important.’

‘I still think you’d be better off in digs, with someone to look after you. How about darning and mending . . .’

‘Dame, don’t worry. Everything will be all right.’

With Dame’s last pieces of advice still in his ears, his car packed with most of his worldly belongings, and the boot filled with food carefully selected by Dame, Dagwood drove up to Oozemouth. With a house, a car, and an independent future, Dagwood felt himself to be a man of substance, a citizen of consequence in the neighbourhood. All I need now is a wife, thought Dagwood carelessly, and began to laugh so much that he nearly ran over one of Molly’s hens, jaywalking in the yard.

‘Frank, tell me your honest opinion,’ said The Bodger. ‘How do you think this refit of
Seahorse
’s is going?’

Frank Tybalt pulled down the corners of his mouth in an expression of indecision. He seemed reluctant to come forward with his honest opinion.

‘It could be better, I’ll tell you that,’ he said.

‘That’s what I rather thought.’

‘It’s much too early to tell just yet,’ said Frank Tybalt carefully. ‘I’m never particularly worried at the start of these things. It’s the middle and the end that count. My honest opinion is that we’re in for a hard struggle.’

‘You mean Sir Rollo?’

Frank Tybalt nodded. ‘For some reason or other, he’s not interested in
Seahorse
, in fact I would go further and say he’s definitely agin’ her.’

The Bodger looked guilty. ‘I had a minor punch-up with Sir Rollo on the morning of the refit conference, you know . . .’

‘I heard about it. That may have had a small bearing on it but Sir Rollo has always been anti-Navy. It’s a well-known thing . . .’

‘You don’t mean he’s actually going to stop jobs on
Seahorse
being properly done?’ cried The Bodger.

Frank Tybalt shook his head. ‘Oh nothing as tangible as that. He couldn’t do it anyway. We wouldn’t let him get away with it. No, it’s much more subtle. It’s all a question of priorities. Supposing the yard have only a certain number of one kind of workmen on a given day. Now, they can put them on
Seahorse
or they can work in that Norwegian tanker, say. I’m only taking a very general case here. So you find those workmen working in the Norwegian tanker . . . With a perfectly good excuse, mind you. Say you have two lathe operators, one good and the other not so good. You’ll find that you’ve got the less good one and the good one is working on a job for another ship. There’s nothing concrete, nothing you can put your finger on. Nobody has actually said, Let’s do
Seahorse
dirt. It’s just an attitude of mind, a sort of atmosphere which percolates down from the top. You’ll find they all use
Seahorse
as an excuse to work off departmental scores. There are times, Bodger, when the shipbuilding side of this firm is barely on speaking terms with the engineering side. Sometimes you’d hardly believe they were supposed to be working for the same firm. The battle and the intrigue goes to and fro and your wretched vessel is in the middle of it like an Aunt Sally . . .’

‘Frank, you make it sound like one of those medieval courts! ‘

‘Nicolo Machiavelli would have felt really at home in this place,’ Frank Tybalt said, bitterly. ‘He’d probably be on the board of directors by now.’

The Bodger stared into the remaining inch of beer in his tankard. ‘What we really need is some way of changing Sir Rollo’s attitude?’

‘That’s it in a nutshell, Bodger. If Sir Rollo suddenly started to bear down on
Seahorse
’s refit, the word would soon get around.’

‘I wonder if a naval son-in-law would help?’

‘I should think it might have a very good . . .
Bodger
, you’re not suggesting that. ..’

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said The Bodger, urbanely. ‘I’m told that Miss Hennessy-Gilbert is a real dish . . .’

‘Bodger, you black-hearted old . . .’

‘Be honest with yourself, Frank. You’d be prepared to go to a lot of trouble to make
Seahorse
’s path plain, wouldn’t you?’

‘I would,’ Frank Tybalt admitted.

‘Then just leave it with me for a bit. I don’t guarantee a thing. It’s just that I have a theory that matters will often turn out the way you want them to, provided you’re prepared to give them a discreet nudge. Are you having the other half?’

Frank Tybalt surrendered his tankard to Daphne with the helpless feeling of a man who has set forces in train more powerful than he had bargained for. Looking at The Bodger’s bland expression, Frank Tybalt felt like the man who has rubbed the lamp, expressed his wish to the genie, and must now abide by the consequences.

In spite of Mr Tybalt’s dark fears,
Seahorse
’s refit appeared, outwardly at least, to be progressing very satisfactorily. The ship’s company had settled into the shipyard as effortlessly as they had settled into the city. The Chief E.R.A., the Electrical Artificer and the other senior technical ratings swiftly worked up that miraculous liaison with their counterparts in the firm which was, and always would be, the envy of the wardroom. Able Seaman Quickly, who had been the Coxswain’s storekeeper and tanky, took it upon himself to refurnish
Seahorse
’s office accommodation. For the first fortnight of the refit gangs of men who announced themselves as summoned by, and friends of, Able Seaman Quickly, brought new chairs, new desks, an extra telephone extension, jugs, kettle, cushions and miscellaneous office equipment. Stoker Gotobed had few talents but one of them was the ability to make fluids pump or flood in any direction or in any quantity he chose. The plumbing in the office block was notoriously unreliable. Generations of occupants had cursed its vagaries. The office plumbing flooded, froze, or dried up, according to the weather and its own whims. But Gotobed, with a hammer and a couple of spanners, struck the living rock like Moses and water gushed forth; similarly, with a screwdriver and jubilee clips, he reclaimed a vast area of the office block from its liability to periodical flooding.

In
Seahorse
herself the refit was progressing, in Broody’s phrase, through a series of Grandmother’s Footsteps. Nothing ever appeared to be happening on board but day by day the ship lost the tight, braced look she had worn when she arrived. Her stays had been thoroughly loosened. Dagwood had often read magnificent pieces of descriptive writing by authors of sea yarns on the chilling lifelessness of a ship in dockyard hands. The writers put themselves to considerable trouble to compose striking similes: they wrote of the soul which had fled the ship, of the life blood only throbbing feebly through her ravaged veins, of the dead hand of the dockyard, and of the ship’s bedraggled appearance, recalling an alley-cat which had lost interest. Dagwood had admired these writers’ industry, but now saw, through
Seahorse
, that they were all mistaken. The ship was not dead. Her soul, if she had ever possessed one, was still on board. She had only exchanged one form of life for another. She was sloughing off her old skin and growing a fresh one. She was not dead but merely submitting to a gigantic and ear-shattering manicure.