Seagulls in My Soup (16 page)

“Oh,
deah,
dahling Willie!”

Soon we were all back at the Hotel Montesol. An obsequious porter glidingly guided Willie into its luxurious interior, and Sissie and I wended our way back onboard
Cresswell
, to the welcomes of Nelson's wagging tail and the jingle of
Rosalinda
's frayed rigging.

“Oh,
deah
Tristan, thenk you so much for such a lovely, ebsolutely
spiffing
evening!” Sissie called from the forward dodger hatch.

“Think nothing of it, love. G'night!”

Nelson crawled under the cabin table and laid himself down alongside my berth. Then I was happier, and fell asleep knowing that tomorrow my crew and her
deah
brother were off to Majorca for three whole days, and that from there the bishop was due to return to the Land of Hope and Glory.

Now as I was a-walking down Ratcliffe Highway,

A flash-looking packet she happened my way,

Of the port that she hailed from I cannot say much,

But by her appearance I took her for Dutch.

Chorus:
Singing too-roo-lye-oora-lye-addie,

Oora-lye-oora-lye-aye!

Her flag was three colors, her masthead was low,

She was round at the counter and bluff at the bow,

From larboard to starboard and so sailed she;

She was sailing at large, she was running free.

She was bowling along with her wind running free;

She clewed up her courses and waited for me.

I fired my bow-chaser, the signal she knew,

She backed her main tops'l and for me she hove to.

I hailed her in English; she answered me clear,

“I'm from the Black Sheep, bound for the Shakespeare.”

So I wore ship, and with a “What d'ye know?”

I passed her my hawser and took her in tow.

I tipped her my flipper and took her in tow,

And yardarm to yardarm it's off we did go.

Then she took me up to her lilly-white room,

And there all the evening we drank and we spooned.

The first five verses of “The Ratcliffe Highway,” a hauling chantey very popular on the crack clipper ships which plied the Western Ocean in the second half of the 19th century. A “packet” was the term used for ships which ran regularly between certain ports. They were considered the elite. The Ratcliffe Highway was just by the East London docks. The Black Sheep and the Shakespeare were pubs frequented by “easy ladies.” The chantey goes on, of course, to tell how the sailor was robbed by the “flash packet,” and ends with a warning to young sailors who might be tempted into similar situations.

Sissie was up and about even earlier than usual. Before the Majorca ferry departed she prepared breakfast, washed the dishes, had a last, hurried scurry around the galley to make sure it was clean. She also made out a list of groceries for me to buy before she returned.

I had been reluctant to shop, at first. To me it was a petty chore—the haggling in Catalan, all the sniffing and weighing and tasting, the rituals of rejection and reluctant acceptance; the small, dark, dingy places full of bags and boxes and black-shawled elderly ladies of limitless girth and age, who looked upon men-shoppers with disapprobation and disdain. In the past I had been forced into demonstrations of fumbling, uncertain
machismo
which would have made even a ballet dancer look like a heavyweight boxer. Then the old ladies would stare at me and slowly melt into matronly helpfulness and condescending expertise. They had even, in some cases, undercharged me.

In Spain, shopping was
women's
work. So was every other type of labor, with the concrete exceptions of fishing, plowing, building tourist hotels, waiting at table, drinking, and begetting the next generation. This was not a case of female exclusion or male exclusivity; woe betide any man who strayed into the preserves of traditional female activities. But foreigners, all of whom the Spaniards at that time looked upon as being somewhat crazy (understandably enough), could sometimes get away with shopping if the old ladies knew them, or if native menfolk were around to hiss through their teeth, as the women started giggling, to subdue their mirth.

Now, over breakfast, I repented my reluctance to shop. It wasn't only that Sissie had hardly any time to do the shopping before the ferry left. It was something else, although of course I didn't tell Sissie what it was. I let her imagine it was because I was thinking of her, helping her, being considerate. A bit of flannel goes a long way, sometimes, with a woman in a frenzy of preparation for a trip.

The real reason I agreed to do the shopping would be, to landsfolk, probably much more mundane, much less romantic.

Sea voyagers on the move for years, as I have been, have a difficulty in really getting to know the people of the countries and islands at which they call. In the main, they seldom have much interest in what lies beyond the waterfront and its denizens. This is not surprising; they probably get a much more genuine sense of a port, if only of its repair facilities and drinking dens, in just one day, than the normal tourist gets in a couple of weeks. But sailors rarely get to know much else—
unless they shop.

The average sailor's needs may be simple (tending, in some cases, towards crude) and they are not always satisfied—but at least they give the sailor contact with others, even if some of those others would never be ordered to tea at Buckingham Palace, or invited to address the Ladies' Guild. The ordinary sailor—I'm talking about deckhands and cooks, not the peaked-cap, blue-blazer brigade—seldom wants to explore much beyond the waterfront or burden himself with historical facts and ancient dates, so as to be a bore at the end of his voyages. It may be a pity, but there it is. The average sailor is not too interested in having his snapshots disturb the native air or undermine the locals' peace again, just that little bit more.

In any case, if a landlubber—especially a tourist—should sneer at this attitude among decides, he should consider that he sees very little more, since he himself is harnessed and constrained by his determination to “see everything,” and his view is severely narrowed by his almost slavish dependence on the machinations of commercial tourism interests. Indeed, I met many tourists in Ibiza who, except for the sun and the sand, might just as well have stayed at home. It would have been cheaper, and for them probably as culturally rewarding.

There's not a lot wrong with commercial tourism. The world belongs to everyone, and everyone should have the right to go wherever they want to, and see and experience whatever they need to. But tourism does wreck the natural scheme of things. It does turn sturdy fisher-lads into simpering, avaricious, crawling hotel waiters; it does change bonny peasant lassies into harried bedroom cleaners; and it does carry with it not only the seeds of its own destruction, but those which can destroy every true value it touches. Tourism usually turns self-supporting areas and people into limpet-dependents of the industrial economies, which is all very well while the industrial areas are booming, and while wealth is growing. But when the crunch comes . . .

These were my thoughts as I ate the breakfast which Sissie had set out for me on a clean china plate, and as Nelson brushed my leg with his tail. He was pleased. I could feel it in the quiver of his tail and the rapid panting of his body against my foot. He
knew
Sissie was leaving
Cresswell
, for a while, at least.

Still in her gym slip, with the early-morning light all rosy-red, streaked across the sky above the companionway, over her frizzy ginger mop with its pink ribbon, Sissie delved into the galley cupboards and shelves, all the while keeping up a running commentary on what needed to be restocked.

“ . . . And peas and beans . . . and, oh
drat!
We've no tomatoes. And this dried fish is smelling to high heaven . . . must chuck the jolly lot out . . .” She scrabbled up the fish corpses and jumped to the companionway ladder.

“Where're you taking that?” I asked, my mouth full of bread, butter, and tea. “Leave it—I'll use it for bait when I get back on the outer mole. There's some fine mullet coming into the harbor.”

She turned and slapped down the brown, rotting fish on the table in front of me. She expected me to object to this, but I carried on chewing. I'd had far worse things on my breakfast table than a few stinking cod.

She stood for a moment, studying me; then, with a shiver of her chubby body, she sighed. “Oh,
deah
Tristan, what
shell
I do?” she wailed.

I glanced up at her, still chewing. “What's up now, lass?”

“Well . . . oh,
deah
 . . . You're so jolly
callous
about things. Ai mean you just don't seem to bally well
care
about yourself, and I'm so worried . . . Ai'll be in an
eb
solute fret about you while Ai'm away. Oh, I simply should
nevah
have offered to go with
deah
Willie to Majorca!”

“Oh, I'll be all right, girl. I'm a big boy now. The only thing I'm concerned about is getting the boat away from these bloody hulks and this damned roadway. These cars roaring past . . .” (there was about one vehicle an hour passing the stern of the boat) “ . . . are sending me off my rocker with all their bloomin' noise.”

Sissie slammed her shopping pad down on the galley shelf. “Then Ai shell jolly well
stay.
I simply
cawn't
leave you heah all alone!”

Nelson's body stiffened against my foot. I stopped chewing my breakfast. I looked at her. “No, you go, Sissie. I'll be all right, I tell you. Willie needs you far more than I do. If he goes to Majorca alone and those bloody sharks over there get hold of him, there'll be an international incident.”

“You're sure, darling? Honestly?
Eb
solutely sure?”

“If I'm to do the shopping I'll need some money,” I said, by way of showing her I was sure.

“Oh,
deah,
of course!” Sissie turned around and bounced up the companionway, her dimpled thighs quivering as she pounded the rungs of the ladder with her ditchdigger's brogues. Soon she was back, looking downcast and almost apologetic. “Ai've only 300 pesetas left with me,” she said. “
Deah
Willie's paying the fare to Majorca, and I'll collect some more money tomorrow.”

“That's all right. Leave it here,” I said majestically, as if I were doing her a favor. Three hundred pesetas were worth about six dollars.

Sissie was supposed to be paying me a guinea (two and a half dollars) a day for her board and keep. It was all terribly English; all arranged over a handshake nine months before, and we had, of course, kept no records. But I reckoned she owed me money.

Soon, as the morning sky changed to blue and the early breeze sprang up out of the east, Sissie was once again transformed into something recognizably feminine. Once again she shone in her white, rose-covered dress. Once again her new white hat, with blue ribbon, was perched atop her whiskey-colored hair, and her eyes shone like the engine-room guardrails onboard the royal yacht
Britannia.
She stood at the top of the companionway, holding her new white handbag.

I took another swig of tea and made my way up the ladder. “Right, let's get you ashore, then.”

Her body seemed to soften as she laid a hand on my arm and pulled me around so she could face me. For a moment I looked into her eyes. It was like looking lengthwise down a roll of freshly manufactured barbed wire. Suddenly a great tear dollop sprang from each eye and hovered there. I stretched the sleeve of my sailing jerkin down over one hand and reached up to wipe away the tears.

She pulled away from me. “No, Ai'm all right. Ai
really,
truly
am,
dahling.”

The hovering teardrops obeyed the eternal laws of gravity and water-level, and fell. Momentarily, involuntarily, I glanced down at my feet, as if to make sure that the teardrops had not damaged the weatherdeck paint we had applied only a few days before in Formentera.

I made my way aft to heave on the stern-lines, with Sissie tottering behind me on her high heels. Gallantly, as another pair of teardrops fell onto the poop whaleback, I took her proffered handbag, at first making sure that no fishermen were peering out of the tiny bar across the street. Sissie leaped. Still watching the bar door, I handed over her bag. As the boat slid out again to the extent of the stern-lines she gazed at me.

“You'd better get cracking,” I said. “Willie will be waiting.”

“Oh,
deah
 . . . Well, if you're sure you'll be
awf'ly
all right . . .” Sissie's face looked doubtful. I was reminded of the first time my mother left me at the infant's school, so long ago, so far away, where the wet west wind whistles over the coast of Merioneth.

“See you, Sissie. For Christ's sake, cheer up. It's only for three days. Anyone would think you were a bloomin' foreigner, the way you're carrying on! I'll see you. I'll be at the outer mole.”

I turned and, without looking back, skittered down the companionway ladder and picked up my mug of tea while Nelson whimpered and stuck his old head on my lap. “Bloody women!” I said to him.

Nelson waved his tail and licked my free hand as I gulped the tea and silently toasted my regained freedom. Once again I was master, under God, of all I surveyed. Even the feel of the cabin woodwork seemed to tell me that
Cresswell
knew it, too. We were three again, a holy trinity—
three,
the old magic number of the Celts. I had the same sense of exultation that my forebears must have had each and every time, throughout the ages, when they swept away the blinding trappings of an alien religion and, for a few magical days each year, wallowed and reveled in their own unregenerate
mire.
I looked up through the companionway hatch; even the sunbeams seemed wilder and freer.

After letting Nelson lick the breakfast plate to clean it (and save fresh water), I made my way again topsides. I looked first over to the town quay. The Spanish powerboats were still there, with their crewmen busy wiping and polishing and generally justifying their otherwise seemingly decorative existences. I glanced at the cathedral atop the Old Town. There was a slight movement of breeze, no more than a candle flicker. It would soon be enough to move the boat. I gazed at the outer mole, almost a quarter of a mile away across the wide harbor, and saw a boat moving out, away from the wall. No sooner had I seen the movement of the departing boat, whatever she was, than I had
Cresswell
's mainsail tiers off, her working jib hanked on the forestay, and her mooring lines off. With a great shove against the silently weeping
Rosalinda,
we were off. Nelson padded softly to his usual sailing station on the poop whaleback, and lay down with his head on his paw to supervise.

Soon the mainsail was hoisted. Even though there was no breeze to speak of, and the gaff was swinging unenthusiastically, and the mainsail hung listlessly for most of the hour it took to work our way over the dead-calm harbor,
Cresswell
felt, under my feet, as if she were joyful, and she slowly slid along over the oily water like a young girl shyly intent on some mild mischief.

Mooring to a jetty stern-to—which is the invariable custom in Mediterranean waters—is sometimes a very difficult thing. For novices it can result in anything from a stove-in stern to a busted rudder or snarled anchor, to a bitter argument in six languages with half a dozen other irate skippers and crewmen. The way you do it is first to pick out the spot on the jetty where you intend to insert your stern. Then you try to make sure that no other anchors or anchor lines will be snagged by yours. You drop your anchor way out from the jetty (at least six of your own boatlengths, as a rule of thumb); then, if you're lucky enough to have an engine, or the fuel to run it, you wangle your stern in between the other boats that are moored up until you are close enough to throw someone a line—if there's anyone around. If there isn't, then you get your stern close enough to the wall to be able to jump ashore with a mooring line so you can secure it to a nearly ringbolt or bollard.

Of course, this is all theory. In practice, the underwater part of the jetty will probably be encumbered by rocks or sunken wrecks or other hazards sticking out from the jetty along the harbor bottom for twenty feet or so. In practice, the two vessels between which you are mooring will be production fiberglass eggshells, which will split open as soon as your boat's hull merely brushes them, and, unless you can afford insurance, bring claims down on your head large enough to ensure that you will spend your old age in abject poverty.