Marrying Off Mother (6 page)

In those lovely far-off days you could travel on such vessels, which took six weeks and carried only eight or maybe twelve passengers. This was no QE2. It was really like having your own personal yacht. However, it had its pitfalls because you could not choose your fellow passengers. But out of twelve you were sure to meet at least two who vaguely resembled the human race and with whom you could strike up a friendship and thus ignore the others without causing offence. On this particular occasion I was the only male passenger on board. The other eleven were elderly Australian ladies who — with much twittering and excitement — were venturing on their very first voyage on a ship, their very first trip to Europe and their very first venture to the homeland of England where the Queen lives. So, as may be imagined, everything was so new and exciting to them that it had to be crooned over. The cabins were wonderful, with real beds, the showers and baths had real water, in the saloon they were served with real drinks and at meals they sat at a large table (polished) while they were served real food. They were like children at their first picnic and it was a joy to watch their enjoyment. However, the source of their most profound enjoyment was the Captain. They took one look at him and fell immediately, deeply, seriously and irrevocably in love with him. For his part, the Captain displayed such charm and consideration that he became, instantly, a sort of nautical Pied Piper. He would go the rounds of everybody basking in deck-chairs to check that the breakfast had been to their liking, that the beef tea (served at eleven o'clock precisely) had been of the right temperature, later in the saloon he would personally attend to the rites so necessary for fabricating that nauseating drink, the dry martini. He would send sailors a-running to alert the ladies to a flock of flying fish, a whale spouting like a fountain in the distance or an albatross floating on ruler-taut wings at our stern as if pinned there to an invisible wire. He took them up to the bows (with an escort of crew members to ensure nobody fell) to watch the dolphins keeping pace with the ship or suddenly zooming ahead in a breathtaking burst of speed and then throwing themselves out of the blue water like exuberant arrows. He took them down to the glittering engine room, where you could have eaten off the floor, and explained to them the internal organs of a ship. He took them up to the bridge from which the ship was run and explained how radar could let you be a ship that passed in the night and not a nasty accident. He took them down to the kitchens and the deep freezes, showing them where the food for their meals was kept and prepared, and they were enchanted. With each revelation they became more and more deeply in love with the Captain and he, enchanting, shy, tender little man that he was, strove each day to produce more and more amazing things for his ladies as a conjuror will produce more and more surprises out of his hat to amaze you.

The Captain's got an ‘art of gold,' the large and forever perspiring Mrs Farthingale said to me over the morning's beef tea, ‘just pure gold. If my husband had been more like that, perhaps our marriage would ‘ave lasted.'

Not having known the redoubtable Mr Farthingale, I could pass no comment.

The Captain's the sweetest man I ever met, the very soul of courtesy and kindness and such good manners for a foreigner,' said Miss Landlock, her eyes filling with tears that threatened to overflow into her second martini. ‘And happily married, so the Chief Officer tells me.'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘so I believe.'

She sighed lugubriously.

‘All nice ones are,' she said.

‘Yes,' said Mrs Fortescue, well into her third gin, poured with a generous hand, ‘there are too few decent blokes around without wives. As soon as I saw the Captain, I said to myself, now there's a good bloke, not one to go philandering even if he is a sailor.'

The Captain would never philander,' said Miss Woodbye, rather shocked. ‘He's too much of a gentleman.'

‘If his wife caught him philandering she'd be spitting chips she'd be that annoyed,' said Miss Landlock.

As there was little to do on the ship and the voyage was a long one, I was treated each day to endless speculation about the Captain's habits, admiration for his many virtues and advice as to what they should buy him as a present when we got to our first (and only) port of call. They looked forward to this day with great eagerness — not, I think, because they wanted to go ashore, but in order to purchase their hero's gift. After much argument, it was decided to buy him a sweater. As the price of such a garment was in doubt, it was decided that each lady was to give two pounds and I, nobly, said I would make up any difference. Having settled this thorny problem amicably, instant warfare broke out when we came to the problem of colour. White was impractical, red was too garish, brown was too sombre, green did not match his eyes and so on, interminably. In the end, before the ladies actually came to blows over this issue, I said that I, with the extraordinary cunning I used to entrap the wild denizens of the jungle, would extract from the Captain his favourite colour. When I eventually returned with the entirely spurious news that the Captain liked oatmeal, the ladies were disappointed but took it well. Another world war had been averted.

Eventually the great day dawned and the ship put into port. The ladies had been up at dawn, as excited as children on Christmas morning. They had been flitting from cabin to cabin in their dressing gowns with shrill cries of ‘Marjorie, have you got a safety pin you could lend me?', ‘Agatha, do you think these beads will go with my blue?' or ‘You couldn't lend me a bra, could you — this one's gone and broken its strap.' Eventually, clad in their best, straw hats ablaze with artificial flowers, so redolent with powder and perfume that they could be smelt a hundred yards upwind, their eyes shining, their faces wreathed in excited smiles, they were all packed like a flowerbed into the tender and set off for shore and their great adventure.

In spite of their pleas and entreaties, I had decided not to go with them. It was a wise decision, for the idea — although I did not tell them this — of going shopping with eleven women, all hell bent on getting the best for their idol, filled me with alarm. Besides, I was in the middle of a book and so I thought I would work quietly in my cabin and order a drink and a sandwich for lunch. Unfortunately, it was not to be. I had barely started work when there was a knock on the cabin door. It was the Chief Officer. He was a man of about thirty, I suppose, with tightly clipped corn-gold hair, a rather heavy face and blue eyes without any expression in them. He had always struck me as being polite, efficient, but a bit on the dour side, compared with the Captain's charming personality.

The Captain's compliments,' he said. ‘He did not see you going ashore with the ladies. The Captain wishes to know if you are unwell?'

‘No, I'm perfectly well, thank you. I just decided to stay on board and finish my work.'

Then the Captain says will you do him the honour of having lunch with him?'

I was somewhat taken aback, but there was really nothing I could do but accept.

‘Tell the Captain I will be delighted,' I said.

‘Quarter to one in the bar,' said the Chief Officer, and went off.

So at quarter to one I drifted into the bar to find the Captain sipping at a glass of pale sherry, with a whole pile of parchment-like papers on the bar in front of him. He shook my hand formally, ordered me a drink and then perched back on his stool, like a pixie on a mushroom top.

‘As soon as I saw you were not going ashore,' he said, ‘I felt I must ask you to lunch. I did not like to think of you lunching alone.'

‘You are most kind, Captain,' I said. ‘As a matter of fact, the reason I did not go ashore is because our ladies wanted to do some shopping. I felt that to spend the day shopping with eleven ladies would be more than my nerves could stand.'

‘Just shopping with one lady is a bad experience, I think. When my wife goes shopping I never accompany her. She brings everything back to the house to show me and the next day she takes it all back to change it,' he said. ‘But ladies are ladies and we could not do without them.'

‘My brother, who has been married four times, once said to me: “Couldn't they have invented something better than women?” ‘

At this the Captain laughed so heartily that he almost fell off his bar stool. When he had recovered and we had ordered more drinks, he became serious.

‘It is about the ladies I wish to consult you, Mr Durrell,' he said. ‘As you know, in four days' time we will be crossing the Equator and we must have a Crossing the Line Ceremony. It will be expected. Now, if you have young people on board, the ceremony normally takes place by the swimming pool, where people are “shaved” by Father Neptune and there is a lot of horseplay and frivolity and it ends up with the participants being ducked in the pool.'

He paused and took a sip of his drink.

‘I don't think our ladies would take very kindly to that,' I said tentatively.

The Captain's eyes grew wide with horror.

‘Oh, Mr Durrell, I could not suggest it for one minute. No, no, no,' he said. ‘Our ladies are — well — shall we say a little too adult for such behaviour. No, what I have organized is a small banquet. Our chef is really very good when he has the right ingredients and so I have sent him ashore to purchase whatever is needed, fruit, fresh meat and so on. We will of course drink champagne with it. Do you think they will approve of that?'

‘My dear Captain, you know they will be enchanted,' I said. ‘You have done so much to make this voyage a happy and memorable one for them, and you must know that they are all desperately in love with you.'

The Captain turned the delicate pink of a rose petal.

‘Furthermore,' I said, ‘in their eyes you can do no wrong and so anything you do will be a fabulous success. The only trouble will be if your wife ever gets to hear about eleven ladies all being in love with you simultaneously.

The Captain turned an even deeper shade of pink.

‘Fortunately, my wife is a very intelligent woman,' he said. ‘She has always said to me, “Siegfried, if you fancy another woman that will be all right, but point her out to me so that I may kill her before you start your flirtation.”'

‘An eminently sensible lady,' I said. ‘Let us drink to her.' We did, and then went in to lunch.

After the chilled soup with the remains of some fish floating in it that looked as though it had either been undescribed by science or been rejected by it, the Captain put down his spoon, patted his mouth with his napkin, cleared his throat and leaned forward.

‘Mr Durrell, there is something else I would value your opinion on since you are a writer of renown.'

Inwardly I groaned. Was he going to ask me to read and comment on his life story —
Fifty Years at
Sea, or
Typhoons Ahoy?

‘Yes, Captain,' I said, dutifully, ‘what is that?'

‘I thought that as well as the banquet for our ladies they should have something more lasting to remind them of the event, so I wondered if you, as a writer, would think these suitable.'

He placed on the white table-cloth one of the pieces of paper he had been looking at in the bar, which looked like the sort of archaic parchment which legal documents were written on in the Middle Ages. On each one had been beautifully engraved in the most elegant of copperplate handwriting the name of the ship, its destination, the date on which it was going to cross the line and lastly, with a great flourish of curlicues, the passenger's name. They were most exquisitely executed.

‘Captain,' I said in admiration, ‘they are wonderful. The ladies will love them. Which talented member of your crew did them?'

The Captain blushed again.

‘I did them myself,' he said modestly. ‘I do a little calligraphy in my spare time.'

‘Well, they are truly magnificent and the ladies will be overwhelmed,' I assured him.

‘I am glad,' he said, ‘I want this to be a happy last voyage for me.'

‘Last voyage?' I questioned.

‘Yes, when we finish the voyage I am retiring,' he said.

‘But you look too young to retire,' I protested.

‘Thank you,' he said, giving a courtly little bow, ‘but I am at retirement age. I have been at sea since I was sixteen years old and, although I have loved the life, I shall be glad to give it up. Apart from anything else, it has been hard on my dear wife. It is the wives who suffer, particularly if there are no children, for they get lonely.'

‘Where are you going to retire to?' I asked.

His face lit up with excitement.

‘In the north of my country there is a small but beautiful bay and a very small town called Spitzen,' he said. ‘My wife and I purchased a house there some years ago. It is right on the rocks, outside the town on the edge of the bay. It is very beautiful. Do you know I can lie in my bed and watch the seagulls flying past my window? I can hear them calling and the sound of the sea. When we have bad weather the wind hoots round the house like an owl, and the big waves crash like thunder on the shore. It is very exciting.'

‘And what will you do?' I asked.

A dreamy expression crossed his pixie face.

‘I shall practise my calligraphy,' he said softly, and it was almost as if he were hypnotized by the thought. ‘My calligraphy needs attention. I shall paint and I shall play the flute and try to make up to my wife for her years of loneliness. You understand, I do none of these things well — except perhaps the last — but I enjoy trying. They give me pleasure even if badly done, and I think pleasure soothes the mind.'

I raised my glass.

‘I drink to your long and happy retirement,' I said.

He gave me one of his quaint, old-fashioned bows.

‘Thank you. I hope it will be so. But the most important thing is that it will delight my dear, patient wife,' and he gave me a radiant, unselfish smile.