The Europe That Was (19 page)

Mr Baker polished glasses and said nothing. The ferryman and two farm hands waited patiently for free drinks. After telephoning a description of the art dealer to county headquarters, the police escorted the bus back to Falkstead.

‘Now, Bill,' said the colonel, ‘be reasonable! Whatever is the use of having allies if one can't put the blame on them?'

‘Hell!' Bill replied, and accidentally kicked over the bowl which was on the floor at his feet. He picked it up and glared protectively at the lot of them.

‘Bill, you have upset these gentlemen's liquor.'

Sergeant Torbin was in honour bound to have her filled up again. He discovered that he was delighted to do so, and reminded his conscience that the Athenian potter must have designed his wares to stand up to an evening's amusement.

What with one of them pointing out that the horses at the bottom seemed to trot whenever the tonic water fizzed on to the gin, and
another swearing it was possible to hold a full bowl by one handle without spilling any—which it wasn't—the strength of the cylix was certainly astonishing. Mr Baker put the auctioneer's clerk to bed upstairs—explaining that he didn't want his house to get a bad name by turning him loose on the road—and that left Bill aware that he was the only member of the party with any worry at all in the back of his mind. Not that he hadn't been drinking his share. But in early days at The Greyhound, when the rest of them had been laying a foundation of Burgundy as if it were beer, he was too overcome by his respect for the bowl to commit more than a reverent sip whenever it came round to him.

At 9.30 he suggested that he ought to telephone for a taxi.

‘Don't you bother!' the colonel said. ‘We'll cross the ferry here, and then it's only half a mile to the junction. He'll get a train from there, won't he, Mr Baker?'

Mr Baker consulted a sheet behind the bar, and said pointedly that if he hurried, he would.

They all piled out on to the landing-stage, and Mr Baker locked up the bar though there was half an hour to go before closing-time. The ferryman unchained his punt, and twice took Bill and the colonel nearly over to the other side. The first time he turned round in midstream without noticing it, and the second time he had to put back because the boat-builder's foreman had fallen off the jetty while waving good-bye.

Bill and Colonel Wagstaff landed and set off along the creek-side path in single file—until, that is, Bill noticed that Wagstaff had left the bowl behind in the punt.

‘Now, see here, colonel,' Bill recommended when they had recovered it, ‘you let me carry that!'

‘OK,' said the colonel. ‘Catch!'

After a quarter of a mile, Wagstaff, who was leading, sat down on a tussock of grass and began to laugh. ‘Bill—Guineas!'

Bill grunted. He had reached the sentimental stage of liquor, and his eyes were dramatically wet as soon as he was reminded that for a dollar and a half and a little courage he could have saved a priceless possession from the inevitable smash.

‘Not fair! I knew guineas would fox you. Unsporting to take advantage of an ally. Funny at the time, yes! Bill, I present you with the bowl.'

‘No, colonel, I won't take her.'

‘Got to take her.'

‘Say, we've had a lot to drink, and—'

‘Boy, I was military attaché in Moscow.'

‘Well, that sure makes a difference, colonel, but—'

It did. By the standards of his experience, Bill could not describe
the colonel as drunk. He was merely incalculable.

‘Also,' said Wagstaff repentantly, ‘I have used it as a common utensil.'

‘Not yet,' Bill answered. ‘I guess you would if I wasn't carrying it.'

‘But from now on it is yours.'

‘Then you let me pay for it,' said Bill, handing the bowl to the colonel and feeling for his wallet.

‘Not allowed to pay for it. That's an order from a superior officer. Even in retirement, sergeant, certain privileges attach themselves to—'

‘Order, my foot!'

‘If you won't take it, I'll pitch the bloody thing in the river.'

‘Go on! You pitch it!'

The colonel did, with a neat back-handed action of the wrist. The cylix flew like a discus into the darkness and landed with a plop on the tidal mud.

Bill Torbin, after one horrified stare at the personified obstinacy of the English, drunk or sober, plunged after it. He squelched out towards the water, while the smell of primeval slime rose from the pits where his legs had been.

The sounds of progress became less violent. There was silence, except for the shunting of a distant train.

‘Colonel, I'm stuck,' Bill said.

‘Nothing to bother about, boy! We're used to it round these parts. Lie on your stomach!'

‘I can't. I'm up to my chest.'

‘Hard under foot?'

‘I wouldn't be talking to you if it wasn't.'

‘Then I'll come and pull you out.'

The colonel advanced over his knees and took off his coat. Keeping hold of one sleeve, he swung the other over to Bill. Between cuff and cuff were a good eight feet.

‘I think I see her,' Bill said. ‘You pull me clear and then I'll sort of swim.'

Wagstaff pulled. The sergeant emerged as far as the thighs, and flung himself forward down the slope. The object was an old white-enamelled basin with a hole in it.

Bill managed to turn, and floundered back like a stranded porpoise until the choice between sinking head first or feet first became urgent. The colonel took a step forward and flung the coat again. He, too, went in up to his chest.

‘I guess this mud is covered at high water,' Bill said after a pause.

‘Float a battleship!' Wagstaff agreed cheerfully. ‘But there's an hour in the ebb still. Nothing to worry about. Round here everybody knows where everybody is.'

‘Well, if you say so, colonel.'

‘If I'm not home when the pubs shut,' Wagstaff explained, ‘my housekeeper will telephone The Greyhound because she was expecting me home to dinner. Mr Watson will telephone Mr Baker. Mr Baker will telephone the junction. The stationmaster will say we never arrived, and somebody will come and look for us. You'll see. Cold, this mud isn't it?'

The comment struck Sergeant Torbin's mixed drinks as excessively funny. He began to hoot with laughter. The colonel, after two or three staccato explosions like an ancient truck protesting against the starting handle, warmed up and joined the racket an octave lower.

‘But you shouldn't … you shouldn't …' yelled Torbin, trying to control himself, ‘you shouldn't have drunk out of her.'

‘Only pity for her, Bill. Only pity for her. How would you like to spend sev–seventy years on the vicar's mantelpiece remembering Alci–bibi–biades?'

Bill pulled himself together, mourning perfection farther out in the mud. ‘She was safer there,' he said solemnly.

‘At the mercy of any passing housemaid. Euphemia, she was called. I knew her well. But out of this nettle, safety, we pluck—'

‘You've got it wrong.'

‘Shakespeare, Bill.'

‘Common heritage, Colonel.'

‘What I mean to say is that when we pick it up it's yours.'

‘Can't get at ten guineas. Under the mud.'

‘Then that's settled. Do you know any songs to pass the time, Bill?'

‘If I had my ukulele—'

‘I'll do that bit,' said the colonel, ‘if you don't mind it being a banjo.'

Bill's repertoire was good for an hour and a half.

‘I could do with a drink,' Wagstaff said, giving a final plunk to his imaginary strings.

‘That search party is sure taking a long time, colonel.'

‘Must have slipped up somewhere. You'd have thought they would have heard us.'

‘Your turn now.'

‘I was considering that question in the intervals,' Wagstaff said. ‘The trouble is, Bill, that the only songs I can ever remember were acquired during the sheltered life of school and university, and are of such monstrous indecency that even sergeants' sing-songs have been closed to me.'

After an hour of the colonel, Bill agreed that the sergeants might be right, and added that he thought the tide was rising.

‘Eight hours down, and four hours up,' said Wagstaff.

‘Not six?'

‘Four.'

‘Hadn't we better try to get out?'

‘You can try, Bill.'

After ten minutes Bill said: ‘I guess I'll learn some of those songs of yours, colonel, when I‘ve got my breath back.'

‘Repeat the words after me, Bill, facing the land.'

In competition with each other, they so concentrated upon the job in hand that neither heard the approaching craft until she was three hundred yards away. With the fast tide under her, she was abreast of them before their yells for help met with any response.

‘'Old on!' shouted the bridge. ‘It ain't easy, yer know!'

The engine-room telegraph rang. The wash from the propeller slid up the mudbank, as the ship was held steady in the tide. A beam of light glared into their faces.

The captain certainly knew his channel well. Going gently astern, he edged into the bank until the bows towered above them. Prettily riding the crest of a wavelet, right under the forefoot of the ship, was the bowl.

‘Look out,' Bill shouted. ‘You'll run her down.'

‘Never saw there was another of you!' bawled the captain.

The telegraph rang violently. White water swirled at the stern. Their rescuer withdrew, edging out a little into the current, and the tide promptly swung the ship in a quarter circle with the bows as centre. The captain went ahead in a desperate effort to regain steerage way, and there she was, aground fore and aft across the channel.

‘Knew that would ‘appen,' said the captain, addressing them conversationally from the forecastle. ‘Now where's the lady?'

‘No lady,' the colonel replied. ‘She walked home.'

‘What? And left you there?'

‘Must have forgotten.'

‘Cor! What I'd'ave said if I'd known there was no lady! Well, catch ‘old!'

The rope fell by Wagstaff. The captain, the mate and the one deckhand dragged him, wallowing, through the mud and up the side of the ship.

Sergeant Torbin followed, but left the rope in order to plunge sideways and recover the bowl. By the time the mate had recoiled the line and flung it back, very little sergeant was visible beyond his cap and an outstretched arm.

‘What d'yer do that for?' asked the captain, when Bill too was safe on board. ‘Balmy?'

‘It's two thousand years old,' Bill explained.

‘Like me frying pan,' said the mate. ‘Went up to me waist for that one, I did. fifty-year-old it might be, and they don't make 'em like that no more.'

The captain led the way to a small saloon under the bridge. It reeked of fug and decayed vegetables but was gloriously warm.

‘You take them things off, and Bert will 'ang 'em in the engine-room,' he said.

‘Any old clothes will do,' the colonel invited, dropping coat and trousers in a solid lump on the floor.

‘Ain't got none. Don't keep a change on board, not none of us.'

‘Blanket will do.'

‘Don't sleep on board neither.'

‘What are you?' the colonel asked.

‘Chesterford garbage scow. Takes it from the trucks and dumps it overboard at forty fathom, see? Never out at night, we aren't, unless we misses a tide like we done yesterday. Bert, give 'em a couple of towels and shovel up them clothes!'

Bill managed to make the towel meet round his waist. The colonel found his wholly inadequate.

‘I'll try this,' said Wagstaff cheerfully, lifting the bowl from the cabin table and removing the tablecloth. ‘Show you how they wear 'em in India!'

The cloth had once been red plush, but the pile was smooth with age and grease-stains. The colonel folded it diagonally, passed two corners through his legs, knotted the tassels and beamed on the captain.

‘Well, I suppose,' said the captain grudgingly, ‘that you'd both better 'ave a drop of rum, though it don't look to me as if it was so long since the last one.' He unlocked a first aid cabinet and produced a bottle.

‘I admit with pride that we have been celebrating the acquisition of a priceless antique,' the colonel answered.

‘This 'ere?'

‘That there.'

‘Sort of basin, like?'

‘An old Greek drinking bowl, captain.'

‘How's it used?'

‘It was
not
used,' the sergeant shouted. ‘They kept it to look at. On the mantelpiece.'

‘Nonsense, Bill! They didn't have mantelpieces. I'll show you, captain. A slave took the jug, so!'—the colonel seized the bottle of rum—and emptied it into the bowl, so!'

‘Hey!' the skipper protested.

‘And then it went round like a loving cup.'

Wagstaff took a sip and with both hands passed the bowl courteously to the captain, who could only drink and pass it on to Bill. Bill despairingly lowered the level by a quarter of an inch, gasped and passed it to the mate—the mate to Bert.

‘Good navy rum, that!' said the colonel, starting the bowl on its round again.

‘Got to stay where we are for the time being,' the mate agreed. ‘Bert, you take them clothes away like the skipper ordered, and then you can 'ave a lie-down.'

With the memory of the rising tide safely behind him, Bill felt that there was some excuse for the theory that an object should be used as its maker intended. Half an hour later, inspired by his towel, he was showing them a dance he had learned in the South Pacific when he began to think the saloon was going round.

It was. The stern of the garbage scow, gently lifted from the mud, swung across river with increasing speed and thudded into the opposite bank. Bill made a dive for the bowl as it slid across the table and landed in the captain's lap.