Good Enough For Nelson

‘I own it’s a trifle draughty,
But I looks at it this way,
you see; If it’s good enough for Nelson,
It’s quite good enough for me!’

MUSIC HALL SONG

© 1977 by John Winton

ISBN 0 7181 1643 7

John Winton was born in London in 1931 and joined the Royal Navy in 1949. He retired as a lieutenant-commander in 1963.

His first novel.
We Joined The Navy
was published in 1959 and was followed by several more successes, including
We Saw The Sea, Down The Hatch, Never Go To Sea, H.M.S. Leviathan
and
The Fighting Temeraire.

He has also published an account of the British Fleet in the Far East during the Second World War,
The Forgotten Fleet
, a biography of Sir Walter Ralegh, an account of life in the Victorian Navy
Hurrah For The Life of a Sailor!
, and many others.

John Winton died in 2001.

‘The Bodger’s back!’

The impact of that message, telephoned up by the sentry on the Main Gate, seemed to induce a series of seismic tremors through the whole College, as though several electric charges were bolting through the very brickwork to earth. Rooks on the high sycamores behind the cricket pavilion rose cawing and calling into the summer air. One Britannia beagle bitch looked up at the commotion and howled in sympathy and at once both packs in their kennels gave tongue together. The horses in the paddock next door moved around restlessly until one bay mare kicked up her heels, and in a moment they were all careering madly in several half circles, their hoofs drumming on the hard ground. Inside the College, some of the keener-eared lecturers stopped in mid-sentence, whilst they and their classes listened for a few seconds, wonderingly, as though waiting to hear again a distant clap of summer thunder. The main light bulb in the planetarium display, in the centre of the astro-navigation laboratory, chose that very moment to expire with a surprisingly loud ping, like an egg-timer whose time has come. On the model of the frigate fo’c’s’le in the seamanship lecture room, a model blake slip inexplicably parted and several feet of model cable rattled out until the model anchor hit the deck below. The Senior Tutor, lecturing a class of Royal Marine subalterns on Byzantine oarsmanship of the sixth century, had been drawing for the several hundredth time in his teaching career a possible seating arrangement for a quinquereme, when his chalk broke dramatically in his hand. The grating squeak of it made every marine tooth tingle and every marine hair prickle, as though with foreboding. While the warm southerly wind floated the intelligence of The Bodger’s coming up, and up again, to the crew of the College helicopter flight, in their draughty hangar high on the hill at Norton, a residual echo carried the news down the wooded, wild-garlic reeking steps to the river at Sandquay, where the floating bridge ferry hooted as though astonished. All life and all work over the whole of the great naval hillside by the Dart paused to assimilate the fact of The Bodger’s arrival.

Meanwhile The Bodger himself came on up the hillside, driving his motor car energetically and confidently. A midshipman in shorts and singlet, doubling down the hill, stopped and stood to attention as the car passed, he knew not why. The spikes on the flowering chestnut trees stood up straight with him. A wood pigeon, showing its white wing roundels in a composite blue and grey flash, swooped low over The Bodger’s motor-car and then sheered up and away, as though anxious not to have to salute.

A large motor-mower was cutting the fairway grass on the hillside golf course. The driver was skilfully swinging his machine around in military right angles.

‘Golf!’ said The Bodger. ‘That’s new.’

The car suddenly rode up on the vicious little tarmac ramp of the ‘sleeping policeman’ with a shudder that seemed to loosen every tooth in The Bodger’s head.

‘Hell’s teeth!’ he said grimly. ‘
That’s
new.’

At the top of the drive, beside the massive white flagstaff with its White Ensign, national flag and signal for the day flying, The Bodger stopped his car and got out. When he shut his car door and stood still for a moment, The Bodger had the sudden scalp-tingling sensation that he had never been away. By some acoustic quirk of the hillside contour, he could hear again, as clearly as though he were down there, the sounds of the river: the piping of coxswains’ whistles, the motor-boat engines, the washing of water churned by many propellers. The twenty years since his last visit were as though they had never been. Time had run back, to fetch an age of gold. There in front of him was Sir Edward Aston’s great College facade, still as The Bodger himself had once said, a fine example of stockbroker’s Titanic. There, still, was that same presence of Edwardian stability, exuding confidence from every line, just as it had done since Edward VII laid the first stone in 1902. This was clearly a structure built in the high and palmy days when Great Britain had dreadnoughts, when she wanted eight and would not wait, when the pound sterling was worth a pound in gold, when a woman’s place was in the home, children were seen and not heard, God was in His Heaven and all was right with the British Empire, upon which the sun never set.

The whole scene matched exactly the image that had been left in The Bodger’s mind’s eye down the years. There, across and either side of the main door, was the quotation ‘It Is On The Navy Under The Good Providence of God That Our Health Prosperity And Peace Depend’ which nobody could ever quote accurately once they had left the College. There, below, were the names Drake, Hawke, Howe and Nelson, in an order which nobody could ever remember. There, above and around the arches of the armoury across the parade ground, was that same creeper in flower, either clematis or wisteria, nobody ever knew. It was all just the same. Gibraltar might crumble, empires might tumble, hell’s foundations might quiver, but the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, stayed the same.

A squad of officers under training were drilling on the parade ground and, once again, The Bodger noticed how closely they resembled the squads of yore. They wore the same blue seamen’s jerseys, the same gaiters and boots. They included some familiar shapes and personalities: the fellow who looked as though he slept on his cap every night, and next to him the one who could never properly co-ordinate the swinging of his arms with his legs and rocked to and fro like a pantomime horse. After a moment or so, The Bodger was able to pick out his dear old friend, the lad who occasionally and unpredictably mistook his right for his left and plunged the rest of his squad into confusion.

The GI himself was the same, with his idiosyncratic choice of phrase. ‘Keep those smiles awf of yore faces. There, yous four rear rank, six middle rank. Both of yer. Yore not ‘ere to be amused. Yore ‘ere to learn ‘ow to be naval awficers and naval awficers are never amused. Naval awficers are sour from birth. Like me.’

The rhetoric of the parade ground, with its accumulative insults and its carefully constructed comparisons, was seemingly eternal. ‘They told me you lot were the cream of England! If you lot are the cream of England than all I can say is, we better ring up the Kremlin right now and tell ‘em to come on, there’s nothing to worry about ‘
ere
! They’ve given me the cream of England all right. All the clots! They’ve given me the cream of England all right. The rich and the thick, that ‘
oo
they’ve given me!’

The GI wore his cap placed so carefully and horizontally on his close-cropped bullet head it might have been positioned with a spirit level. At moments of mental stress, which were apparently frequent, he bunched his fists into huge red masses of clenched bone, worked his jaw rhythmically to and fro, soundlessly rehearsing fresh epithets, and jerked his head back and forward, back and forward, gobbling wordlessly like an exasperated turkey cock. He might have been a reincarnation of The Bodger’s own dreaded task-master of before the Second World War, the sinister Petty Officer Pounter. Pounter could pounce like a panther, bawl like a bison, and coo, deceptively, as a sucking dove. This GI, prowling and growling around his squad, could have been Petty Officer Pounter’s living breathing son, a veritable chip off the old breech-block.

‘When you lot get to sea,’ the GI was remarking, conversationally, at full decibel throttle, ‘
instant
obedience will be demanded of you. The sea, for yore information, is that wet, blue,
crinkly
stuff you can see over my left shoulder.’

The very cadences of the GI’s voice reminded The Bodger powerfully of Pounter. Memories of that terrible man came flooding back. Pounter used to say ‘Pick yore feet up, you there, you, you, you, you, that means you, up, up, up.’ Pounter used also to take the extra punishment drills, and term after term The Bodger and his mates suffered under him, until the last church service of their passing-out year. The Padre gave out the hymn, from Ancient and Modern, number four hundred and thirty-six. When the organ began the introduction, The Bodger and his term-mates drew deep collective breaths, and sang with a fervour that would have astounded the good Bishop Wordsworth :

Hark the sound of PO Pounter
Chanting at the crystal sea.
Alleluia, pick yore feet up,
Pick yore feet up, Lord, means
Thee
!

Every eye was then on Petty Officer Pounter and they were all rewarded by the deep red flush of gratification, the very first and only sign of emotion Pounter ever betrayed in public.

The right-for-left merchant did his nervous circus trick again, and the squad dissolved into a raggedly counter-marching chaos. One officer was so overcome he ducked his head and laughed out loud.

The GI’s eye swivelled round and picked him out. ‘That is not very funny, Mr McAllester. We are not amused, Mr
MeAllester
! To show how very little we are amused, Mr McAllester, we will double smartly three times round this ‘ere parade ground, saluting all senior officers in the proper manner, as we
pass
.’

The Bodger took the point of the reference to senior officers. Although the GI had not once turned his head and looked at The Bodger, he knew he was there.

McAllester was now doubling smartly towards The Bodger, his large boots slamming regularly on the hard parade ground. As he passed, he brought his hand up to the salute and jerked his head to the left. He had a very good idea of who The Bodger might be, but in any case those four gold stripes on The Bodger’s sleeve spoke for themselves. Even had The Bodger been in plain clothes, McAllester would still have saluted him, on the principle that he looked the sort of person to be saluted and there was always safety in saluting in numbers.

‘Just a moment, McAllester!’

‘Sir!’ The running figure clattered to a halt, and came back. He stood breathlessly at attention in front of The Bodger, and once more saluted. ‘Yes, sir?’

He was a very tall young man, taller than The Bodger himself, and he wore sub-lieutenant’s stripes on the shoulders of his blue jersey. The name-tally pinned to the left side showed his name and initials H. M. McAllester. The Bodger noted the flushed cheeks, the pale freckles across the bridge of the nose, the fair hair showing in slight side-bums, the blue eyes, the cap askew to port, and most of all, the sheer bursting health and vitality and high spirits of the young man. This was a face straight out of The Bodger’s memories, the authentic image of Dartmouth as it used to be.

‘How long have you been here, McAllester?’

‘Ten days, sir. That’s ten days this time, sir.’ Seeing The Bodger’s look of bewilderment, McAllester was very ready to go on. ‘Not counting the time I’ve already done here, sir. I was a Cornwallis entry, sir. Do one term here at Dartmouth, sir, and then go to university, get a degree, and then come back here for two and a half terms, sir, before going to the training ship.’

The Bodger had never heard of the Cornwallis entry, but this was no time for cross-examination. ‘Which university did you go to?’

‘Northumbria, sir.’

The Bodger had never heard of Northumbria University either, but concluded it must be one of the new ones.

‘What did you read?’ The Bodger was obscurely pleased that he had remembered in time the correct terminology. One ‘read’ at university, just as one ‘rode’ to hounds.

‘Old English and Old Norse, sir, with a bit of Mediaeval Philosophy during the last year, sir.’

‘Cor crikey!’ said The Bodger, half admiringly, half incredulously. ‘Do you think all that’s going to be of use to you in the Service?’

‘Oh yes indeed, sir. They certainly thought so at the Interview, sir. They were quite thrilled about it, sir.’

‘I can well believe it,’ said The Bodger. The eccentricities of the Admiralty Interview Board were traditionally legion. Besides, as a body, they were easily thrilled. ‘And you’re settling down all right, finding your way about and all that?’ It was so long since The Bodger had made these polite conversational enquiries he was unsure of the correct phrasing.

‘Oh yes, sir. It’s all very illuminating, sir, even it is a bit limited in some ways. We’re not here very long, but we do an awful lot, sir. It reminds me of that saying about the bird that flies into a lighted and warm hall from the dark outside, before flying out again into the darkness, sir.’