Seagulls in My Soup (28 page)

We were quite close now, after I'd tied up the stern-line. “Venice? That's a longish run, Amyas—about a thousand miles.”

“Oh, that's all right. No hurry. Just sort of bimble from port to port, as it were.”

“You've sure been busy,” I said.

Amyas watched Sissie, shyly, as she leaped onto the jetty and marched off to the post office. When she was out of hearing he said, in a low voice, “Well, Tristan, did you pop her the question, as it were?”

“Yes. Nothing doing, Amyas. She's too fond of Nelson, and the dog seems to have taken a shine to her now. It would be a pity for Sissie, and of course Nelson would be heartbroken.”

Amyas bent his head, downcast. Even his mustache drooped. “Of course . . . wouldn't dream of . . . never do to break up a friendship, would it?”

We were silent for a few moments; then I had a brilliant flash of inspiration. “That dinner you invited us to—is it still on, Amyas?”

“Of course. Tonight, if you like,” he replied.

“Good, we'll be there, and I think we can make it very worth your while, my friend.”

“Oh? How's that?”

“I've an extra passenger for a few days. She's not onboard yet—she's coming by bus from San Antonio. You know that takes forever while they drop the chickens off at every bloomin' farm en route . . . But she'll be here in a while. She's a real corker, Amyas.”

Amyas' eyebrows shot up. His mustache cocked its ends.

“Yes. Friend of Sissie's, actually. Fell out with some bloke in Formentera, so she's a bit cut up right now, but she's not too bad, normally, if you don't look too carefully. Steady, like—a children's writer.”

Amyas listened and thought intently for a moment. Then he said, “Sounds ideal, as it were.”

“Yes, suit old Dreadnaught down to the ground, she will.”

“Do you think she likes steel boats, Tristan?”

“Loves 'em,” I lied. “At least that's what she told me.”

“Looks nice now, eh, the old Dreadnaught?”

“Smashing, Amyas. You painted her inside, too?”

“Oh, no, not yet. I'm saving that for when the refit's finished, in Venice.” His eyes took on a dreamy, poetical look.

“Doesn't matter too much anyway, Amyas. Miss P. isn't all that particular. All she needs really is a goodish bloke . . .”

“Miss P?”

“Oh, sorry. Actually her name's Pomeroy.”

“Oh? What's her first name?”

“I'm not sure. I think it's Miss.”

“Oh . . .” Amyas thought hard for another minute, then looked up at me again. “Yes, as you were saying the other day, funny people, women.”

“Oh, this one's all right. You'll always know where you are with her.”

Amyas smiled. “Good. Just the ticket, as it were, eh?” Then he followed my gaze along the jetty and stared as Miss Pomeroy made her grand entrance—blue-rinsed hair, mascara, rouge, face powder, strings of pearls, 1920s Alice-blue dress, beige silk stockings, silver slippers, three-inch heels—the works. She looked like Mistinguette heading for the Moulin Rouge.

Amyas' face at first squinted; then, slowly, as La Pomeroy swung and sashayed and jerked her way toward us, it softly subsided into an idiotic grin of desperate welcome.

Never seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be;

For the gentle wind doth move

Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart;

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.

Ah! she did depart!

Soon as she was gone from me,

A traveller came by,

Silently, invisibly:

He took her with a sigh.

“Love's Secret”

—William Blake

It was quite a job, assisting La Pomeroy to navigate her way in her tight blue dress and three-inch heels over
Cresswell
's stern and down into the cabin. Amyas Cupling had, of course, sprung to help, with his mustache bristling in the direction of Miss P's eyes. Her hair was even shorter and bluer now. I guessed that she had been to a hairdresser on the way back from San Antonio.

“Ohthankyousomuchsojollykindofyou,” she gushed at Amyas, who blushed.

“Have to make sure the little ladies are all right, as it were,” he said, after I had introduced them to each other.

I was curious about Miss P's new hair-do. “You're looking more chipper,” I said, wondering where the money had come from.

“Yes my guardian sent the money and I can leave tomorrow . . . I'm so grateful to you but I still think I ought to go back and make sure poor Sven is all right,” she screeched from over her drooping dozens of tiny pearls.

“Well, you can't go over to Formentera tonight. Amyas has invited us all to dinner. He'll be very cut up if you don't go. He's a great admirer of children's writers—Enid Blyton . . . Dorothy Parker . . . Agatha Christie . . . the lot. Amyas laps 'em up. Terribly literary, he is.”

Even as I lied to Miss P., Sissie clattered back onboard. “Yoo-hoo! Dahling skippah! Deah Miss Pomeroy! And Nelson, oh you perfectly
sweet
old things . . . I've brought us some
supah
fresh mullet for suppah!”

I started to make for the hatch. “You'd better go to that French gin palace moored along the jetty. Get a bit of ice. Stick the mullet in a bucket. We're off ashore to eat tonight. Amyas next door has invited us . . .”

Sissie's Saxon-blue eyes gleamed like a hearse's wheel-spokes. Her eyebrows shot up. Her frizzy ginger hair seemed to crackle. “Oh, jolly-dee! A dinnah-party! How
supah!
I do so simply
adore
a meal ashore!” She pecked my beard.

“Don't thank me—thank Amyas,” I muttered as I climbed the ladder. Nelson hobbled up after me. He knew when it was time for the males to adjourn. It was bad enough when Sissie alone had been onboard and getting dolled up to go ashore in the tiny, poky forepeak—but with La Pomeroy already delving into her sequined purse for paper towels and face powder, it was time for us two to be conspicuous by our absences. We left the Dragon of Devon and the children's author to work their mysteries, and clambered over onto
Dreadnaught
after courteously calling out to Amyas, who was below.

I observed, as I passed over the brand-new yellow paint on her deck, that Amyas had completely transformed
Dreadnaught,
at least topsides. There were now at least three coats of white gloss paint all over her hull and superstructure, and the masts had been replaced by shiny, new oak spars. She had no filthy sail rigged. I called down the hatch into the gloom below. “Very nice job up here, Amyas!”

Amyas was shaving his chin. “Sort of have to spruce up a bit, if the little ladies are going to be interested, as it were, eh?” His mustache, half-surrounded by soap lather, bristled at me. “Think she'll like it? I mean Miss Pomeroy?”

“She's already told me how good
Dreadnaught
looks,” I fibbed.

“Come on down. I'll soon be finished sprucing up.”

I clambered down the still-rusty cabin ladder. The scene below was almost as rustily chaotic as it had been a week or more ago, before the boat had been sunk. The only difference that I could see was that now all the engine bits were sacked up in potato bags lying in the bilge, and that Amyas was now using a blow-torch for cooking.

As Amyas scraped away, staring into a tiny mirror hung over the blow-torch cooker, there was silence between us until he said, “Nice little thing. Sort of delicate, as it were?”

“Oh, Miss P's one of the best.”

“From the North?”

“Yorkshire. Same as Emily Brontë.”

“Fine country. Sturdy folk, as it were.”

“Not too profligate.”

“Good engineers, too.”

“George Stevenson.”

“Where it all started. Sheffield steel.”

“Not bad looking, either.”

Amyas grinned. “No spring chicken,” said he, “but I've never been much of a one for flighty young things. The lads used to go ashore and get into all kinds of scrapes with them. You know how it is—boys will be boys, I suppose.”

“Feel their oats.”

“But I was never much of a one for that, as it were. Spent my time studying for my certificates. Only met one who was a bit interested in slide-valves and things like that. My missus. But she sort of turned off it after we were wed.”

Amyas donned his new suit jacket and straightened out his tie. I studied him in the rusty gloom. Apart from his shirt collar, which was awry and a mite grubby, he looked quite presentable now.

“Look all right, old chap?” His mustache ends met his ears.

“Splendiferous.” I turned and preceded the captain of the good ship
Dreadnaught
up the bent, rusty ladder.

We waited in the gloaming for an hour or so while our ladies made themselves shipshape and Bristol-fashion. Conscientiously, both Amyas and I kept our eyes and his mustache turned away from
Cresswell
's companionway as we waited and waited, and Amyas discussed propeller pitches and compression ratios in a mute voice, so as not to disturb the ladies' toilette.

It was quite dark by the time Sissie and La Pomeroy emerged from the cabin. In the dim light of the jetty lamps, Sissie's ginger hair shone like a new pan-scourer. She had it lashed taut over her ears with a blue ribbon. She wore her white dress cluttered up with more roses than they ever saw at one time in the Stilly Isles. La Pomeroy was thinly resplendent in her newly cleaned, low-waisted blue dress, and had brightened it up even more with a great red silk sash, almost as big as she was, tied in a bow on her quarter. Her blue Eton crop shone wanly in the lamplight over the mascara and rouge. I watched Amyas' face as he helped La Pomeroy over
Cresswell
's stern-rail. He was beaming. “My, we do look elegant this evening,” he stammered, as he gently took Miss P's scrawny hand into his stubby engineer's mitts.

Miss Pomeroy's make-up cracked as she smiled at Amyas. Sissie screeched, “Oh, deah Mistah Cupling, it's so jolly
supah
of you . . .”

Then the four of us forged ahead along the jetty, toward the lower Ibiza town. Amyas still clutched Miss Pomeroy's elbow; Sissie marched along at Miss P's other side; and I hung back a bit to the rear until we had passed away from the waterfront and the grinning fishermen outside the bodega Antonio.

Amyas proudly led us into the little whitewashed restaurant, “Es Quinques,” which means “The Lamps” in Catalan. It was owned and run by a fat, merry-looking man called Enrique, together with his family. All around the crowded restaurant, which was open to the street like a garage, great black wrought-iron lamps provided the only decoration, except for a picture of Jesus gazing upward and sideways and holding a heart, which glowed and dripped blood, in his hands.

Several of the waterfront habitues were in Es Quinques. The Dutch lady who said she had been Gurdjieff's lover (and looked it); the exiled American writer, Steel, not yet waving his arms but obviously, as he glared at his wine bottle, girding his muscles; the Finnish poet, half-slumped over toward Alf the London horse-punter; and, at the side of the Hope of Erin, Rory O'Boggarty, holding forth on love and death, a beautiful young woman who stared glazily at Sissie and La Pomeroy as they squeezed past her table. It was like some villainous Valhalla.

Obsequiously, Enrique fanned us to a corner table. There, after a flurry of finding places for purses and ribbons and other feminine whatnot, we all settled down to a romantic dinner by candlelight.

Sissie kicked off as we waited for the wine and food. “Oh, deah Mistah Cupling, Ai haven't really met any engineeahs before. Ai'm sure it must be jolly-well interesting?”

Amyas gazed into Miss Pomeroy's eyes. They were almost completely healed now, though some puffiness still lingered under the eighth-of-an-inch mascara. La Pomeroy sighed and smiled at Amyas.

“Have you been dreadfully far yet, Mistah Cupling?” Sissie beseeched.

Amyas tore his eyes away from the tiny children's author. “Oh, sort of bimbled a bit here and there, as it were. I'm not in any hurry, actually, Miss Saint John. Have you come very far with
Cresswell
?”

“Ectually from Frawnce. It was all jolly int'resting and supah . . .” Sissie paused for a moment as Amyas poured wine, first for Miss P., then for Sissie, then for me. Then she went on. “But I did so want to go to the south of Spain, and to Morocco—so dashed int'resting . . .” Sissie sighed as Enrique clattered plates onto the table. “ . . . but poor deah Tristan has so many jolly awful difficulties, and does all sorts of exciting boat deliveries. It looks as if we're sort of stuck around the bally Balearic Islands for at least a few weeks, yet.”

Miss Pomeroy piped up. “Oh thank goodness you were here to rescue me from that awful man!”

“Now, now, Miss P.,” I said, “we really shouldn't discuss that here. Let bygones be bygones. Enjoy yourself, lass.”

Miss P. slurped her wine. She smiled at Amyas. “Of course I mustn't spoil Mister Cupling's evening must I?”

“No,” I told her.

After soup Amyas beamed up at Sissie. “I've been down that way in
Dreadnaught
—I mean the south of Spain.

“How jolly exciting for you, Mistah Cupling!”

“Not really,” said Amyas. “I did mean to refit my engine in Málaga, as it were, only I found a dead body in the sea off Torremolinos . . .”

We all looked at Amyas. Our steamed cod and chips had just been served. “A what?” I asked.

Amyas' mustache grinned from ear to ear. “Yes,” he said, “it was a biggish chap. I was making my way up the coast and there he was, just sort of floating along, as it were. As I said, a biggish chap. Of course, by that time he must have been to the bottom and come up again. All gray and bloated, as it were. No hair left, of course. Fish had been at him. I say ‘him', though I never knew if it was a man or a woman.”

“So what did you do, Amyas?” I asked.

Sissie dropped her fork on her plate, half-horrified, half-fascinated. Miss P. gazed into the engineer-poet's eyes.

“Well, I tied a line around his ankle. I had to make it a longish line. He was a bit ripe by then, as it were, and I had to retie it after a few hours. The sea was a mite roughish, you see, and his foot came off. So I retied it around his chest, under his arms, as it were.”

“What was your idea?” This was a new one on me. I was intrigued.

“Oh, I was going to tow him into port, get him a decent burial, as it were, but when I got to Málaga the next day the harbor police turned me away. Said that the sight of a dead body would make the tourists unhappy. Upset them, as it were.”

By now Sissie seemed to have completely forgotten her steamed cod.

Miss P. gazed in adoration at Amyas as he went on. “So I towed him back down the coast to the beach at Torremolinos. There was hardly any wind at the time, and I was still refitting the engine, of course. Took a day and a half to sail
Dreadnaught
down there.” Amyas swallowed a great forkful of steamed cod, sipped his wine, and continued. “But it was the same story in Torremolinos. In fact the harbormaster even threatened to arrest
Dreadnaught
if I didn't leave immediately. There was still no wind and I had to push her out with my sculling oar.”

“How dreadfully ghastly, Mistah Cupling!” Sissie exclaimed. “But of course theah are so many sort of delaightful,
supah
places in the Mediterranean, aren't there?” she supplicated.

“Almeria's not bad. The old castle on the hill and everything, as it were,” replied Amyas, smiling at Sissie. “But even there it was no good. By that time, of course, I'd had the body tied up astern for almost a week. It was practically bright green by the time I got to Aguilas. The police there were very polite, but they were having none of it. There was no identification on the body. There could hardly have been any way of telling how the poor chap had died.”

A big tear sprang to Sissie's eye. She desperately tried not to look down at the now rapidly cooling steamed cod on her plate. Miss P., in between finicky nibbles at her fish, still gazed at Amyas and his mustache, as it increasingly bristled in her direction.

“I know, Miss Saint John,” said Amyas, as a tear slid down her rose-bedecked chest, “I felt the same, as it were. Of course I couldn't let the poor chap just float around, as it were.”

“So what did you do with him?” I asked
Dreadnaught
's skipper.

“Well, he was sinking again by now, of course. I'd been towing him around for over a week by the time we sailed into Cartagena. I had to lash a few of my plastic fenders around him to keep the poor devil afloat.”

“Why didn't you just let him sink? You could have said a prayer,” I said.

“Oh, I couldn't do that. I thought he ought to have a decent Christian burial. But they wouldn't accept the body anywhere, and I towed it around for three weeks. It wasn't easy . . .”

Amyas dug again into his cod and lifted a great mound of dead-white fish flesh into his mouth. I gazed at the bleeding-heart picture behind Miss P. Sissie softly pushed her plate away from her. “Dahling,” she addressed me, “Ai simply cawn't imagine why, but I just don't have one teeny weeny bit of appetite tonight. Oh, deah Mistah Cupling, do, please, forgive me!” she begged.

“Of course, dear lady,” said Amyas. “As I was saying, it wasn't easy, because he had been a heavy man. Bits and pieces started coming off when the weather got a bit uppity—his intestines and everything. Finally I lost him in a gale off Valencia. I'd been taking him there, you see? Thought there might be a chance they'd accept him, as it were, in Valencia—not as touristy as it is farther south, is it?
Dreadnaught
got quite a bit of buffeting that night, and of course I couldn't just sit there in the wind and rain watching a corpse floating around, could I? Anyway, by that time the line had been paid out almost three hundred feet. Almost impossible, as it were, to see the body in the high seas rising up and down, and in the rain and dark . . .”