Black Beech and Honeydew

  When the midday luncheon bell was rung by the cabin-boy-wireless-assistantorchestra, everyone was expected to go at once to the dining room. Captain I. would be standing inside the door. As one entered he would bow and present one with a plate. Behind him on a side table were the smörgåsbord to which one helped oneself. They were always good. When everybody was seated the Captain took up his knife and fork and so did we. On a unique occasion one of the unattached ladies was late and we all sat, rigid with decorum, until she arrived. Captain I. received her apologies with an austere giggle. Even at breakfast the same protocol was expected of us.

  The Captain had all our passports and therefore knew all our ages and birthdays. These he loved to celebrate. As if to oblige him, several of us had birthdays during the voyage. I was one. Dinner, on these occasions, was extra special. The ladylike and kind little steward whose name, Norwegian though he was, turned out to be Dan, also adored these parties, and caused the orchestra to play ‘Happy Birthday to You’ on his piano-accordion in the passage outside.

  There was a cake with candles (tactfully unspecific as to numbers), wine and, as a grand climax, the Birthday toast, proposed by the Captain, in a long, involved speech that always made him cry. He would start off quite gaily with one or two careful little jokes but as soon as he got round to saying how nice it was to have whichever of us it was, in his ship and how well-behaved we were, his large blue eyes would fill with tears and his voice would tremble.

  It so happened that our Queen’s birthday followed all the others. Not her official birthday but her real one. I’m afraid none of her subjects among the passengers had noticed this circumstance. Not so, Captain I. He knew. He commanded the Birthday Dinner to end all Birthday Dinners. Dan decorated our nursery tables up to saturation point. The cook went away out on decorative icing and the orchestra played our National Anthem without the slightest hesitation. He also played ‘Happy Birthday to You’ which we were expected, always, to sing. And indeed all the Norwegian officers and Mr Thompson, the Dane, loudly gave tongue in their own languages. Naturally, we did, too, but it was a little difficult to know how to phrase the penultimate line.

  ‘Happy Birthday, dear Queen Elizabeth,’ would be redundant and ‘Dear Queen’ recalled President Roosevelt’s letters to King George V. Too late one thought of ‘Your Majesty’; the thing had already passed off in an ambiguous rumble.

  Captain I. rose to propose the Royal Toast. He recalled Norway’s close association during the War with Great Britain and the Commonwealth. He praised the House of Windsor. He reminded us that we and he and his officers and Mr Thompson, the Dane, were members of three great surviving monarchies. And gracious, as Hilaire Belloc would have said, how the Captain cried!

  One episode of this enchanting voyage sticks most vividly in my memory. Essie had agreed to act as secretary for the duration and we used often to work in the evenings at my current book, Scales of Justice. On the night we sailed through the Dardanelles we resolved to stay up until we passed the beaches at Gallipoli, hoping to see them if the moon shone clear. It was overcast, however, and when we stood on deck at about one o’clock and peered into the dark we could only discern, very faintly, a glint of something that we knew was the beaches. The sea was dead calm and the air enervated and breathless. We had wished each other good night and were about to go below when we became aware of a cessation in sound and in movement. The Temeraire’s engines had stopped. We lay motionless somewhere, we thought, off the Hellespont. A rhythmic sound of paddling lapped into the silence. We crossed over to the starboard side and there, bobbing towards us in the blackness, was a lantern. As it drew nearer we saw that it hung from the prow of a caique.

  The Turk in the caique, foreshortened and upward gazing in the lamplight, hailed us: ‘Ohé, Captain!’ and above us from the bridge, the Captain quietly answered him. Their common language was English which they spoke with a kind of biblical rotundity. It so happened that both their voices were deep and beautiful. Essie had her shorthand pad and pencil with her. ‘Do take this down,’ I said.

  ‘Who are you, Captain?’

  ‘The Temeraire.’

  ‘From where, Captain?’

  ‘Out of Adelaide with wool for Odessa.’

  ‘How many souls aboard you, Captain?’

  ‘Sixty-three.’

  ‘Where are you bound, Captain?’

  ‘For Istanbul.’

  ‘Do you wish a pilot, Captain, for Istanbul?’

  ‘I do so wish.’

  ‘I have no pilot tonight, Captain. If you will, you may proceed without pilot to Istanbul.’

  A pause.

  ‘I will so proceed.’

  ‘Good night, Captain. A safe passage.’

  ‘Thank you. Good night.’

  The Turk’s teeth gleamed. He raised his hand. The lantern dipped, circled and bobbed away into the night. The engine-room bells rang and we began to throb again.

  When I woke next morning and looked out of my porthole I thought: ‘What quantities of very tall chimneys sticking up out of the mist and how romantic they look – they might be minarets.’

  The mist dissolved and they were caught like the sultan’s turret in a noose of light and declared themselves. They were minarets, of course. This was the Golden Horn and there was Istanbul and ahead lay the Bosphorus, the Black Sea and Odessa.

  Of all the landfalls I have experienced: Hong Kong, for instance, or the Piraeus, Venice even, or Beppo or San Francisco at dawn, Odessa was the strangest, the most ambiguous, the most foreign. We arrived in the roads late on a spring afternoon and anchored there awaiting permission to berth. The sky was overcast and the sea dark and choppy. The city itself was simplified almost to a silhouette of onion domes, one of them flaming with the sunset, long roofs, dim flights of steps (’Ah, The Battleship Potemkin,’ one thought), and the hint of a grandiose theatre down near the wharves. Professor S. talked of Genghis Khan, of barbaric splendours and terrors and the clash of ancient cultures.

  The wind shifted. It now blew towards us from the land and carried with it the smell of occupied places and a most disturbing sound – the sound of a vast crowd of men, singing. Someone produced field glasses and through them we could just see that the steps and streets of Odessa and an open park or square were all swarming with people. The effect of this was extraordinarily dreamlike.

  It may perhaps be remembered that as a child I had formed a romantic attachment for ‘Russia’, an attachment inspired in the first instance by what I suspect was a very slick piece of travel writing. My fantasy bore as little relation to Russia, I daresay, as the Pre-Raphaelite vision did to mediaeval Italy but the sight and sound of Odessa that evening revived it in an extraordinary degree.

  The singing continued: vague, remote, gigantic. A flight of aircraft – Migs, someone said – roared overhead. A gunboat came out, encircled us and made off. A line of airships steamed out of port and into the open sea. It was all very odd and ominous we thought.

  Apart from the gunboat nobody paid the smallest attention to us.

  It was about now, I think, that one of the passengers pulled himself together and looked at a calendar. The First of May.

  The Captain was annoyed and worried. He had not visited a Soviet port before and was, he said, uneasy about procedure. He had been sent a signal to the effect that it was forbidden to sound the ship’s siren and that he was to remain where he was until he received further instructions from the port authorities. He told us that an official party would board us and that the passengers must remain in their cabins where they would be interviewed and might be searched. All passports, cameras and field glasses were to be handed over. Such were his instructions. ‘I do not like,’ he said, very red in the face. ‘I very much do not like. I am obliged.’

  We waited there, disregarded, until the next afternoon when a lighter came alongside, swarming with uniformed men and women: drab and businesslike. For the first time on the voyage a loudspeaker came into play. We were to go to
our cabins and remain there until further notice.

  My door was opposite that of the dining room which was ajar. The tables had been re-arranged by Dan to resemble an office. I left my own door open and sat on my little sofa from where I had an oblique view of the Captain, looking cross, seated at a table behind a mountain of papers and surrounded by Russian officers. A large-bosomed, frightening lady in a shiny navy-blue uniform and with the worst permanent wave I have ever seen, strode down the passage, observed me and shut my door very firmly indeed.

  I was nervous. At that time, a particularly icy depression prevailed in the cold war. I had obtained what was held to be an adequate visa for the USSR and hoped to go ashore. The friends in New Zealand of whom I have already written were Estonians, exiled from their own country since it had been taken into the Soviet Republic. When one forms a close friendship one absorbs something of the life of the other partners and I had learned from them to amplify and, as it were, steady my childish dreams of their country. I had with me a parting gift: an old medal of St Innocent, patron saint of travellers. It is silver and has a hole cut in it like a window for the little brown, painted face of Innocent. There is also a legend in Russian characters. I had wondered, when we were warned of a search, possibly of our persons, what would be thought of Innocent, obviously a Czarist relic? When I asked the Captain’s advice he said he thought it would be best if I posted the medallion to London from Port Said and added the possibility of its being stolen in Egypt was extremely high. So I kept Innocent and wore him under my blouse as I sat in the cabin and waited. There was also the book. It was now typed in triplicate. Would it be seized? Should I conceal a copy in a locked suitcase? But if they demanded the keys? In the end I distributed the typescripts in weighted heaps over my dressing table and little bureau and sofa. No deception practised.

  After a long time, boots clumped down the passage. There was a rap on Essie’s door and then a prolonged rumble of voices. Extremely silly, I thought, to be apprehensive but it would be rather nice when it was all over. What ages they were with poor Essie. Were they frisking her for weapons? Doors and drawers banged.

  When, at last, they called on me they turned out to be an extremely pleasant and comely young officer who spoke good English and an offsider like something out of a hammy film of Treasure Island, with a scar running from his temple to the corner of his mouth and a villainous, hangdog manner.

  I had to sign eight identical declarations that I had no firearms. While I was doing this, Scarface searched the wardrobe and drawers. There were other declarations, I have forgotten to what effect. The young officer said he understood I was an author and glanced at the typescripts. I said we had been interested in the gala sounds from the shore and he said yes, it was a great week in the year. There was a wonderful ballet at the Opera House. I said how lovely and I looked forward so much…He said unfortunately none of the passengers would be permitted to land. A fury of disappointment seized me. ‘But my passport! I’ve got the special visa! They told me it was all in order.’

  ‘I regret,’ he said, nicely. ‘No. Your passports will be sent up to Moscow but they are not sufficient.’

  ‘Could you perhaps arrest me after we have berthed and march me off as far as the Opera House? I would be delighted if you would come as my guest. When the ballet was over you could march me back again.’

  He was polite enough to treat this as a good joke and for the rest of the interview we got on very pleasantly, I thought, with lots of jolly laughter. Scarface stood inside the door and looked at nothing.

  The young officer repeated his regrets, saluted, smiled in a friendly manner and took his leave.

  Not long afterwards the loudspeaker said we could come out of our cabins.

  The official party was assembled on deck and about to climb down a rope ladder to the lighter. My young officer emerged from a group and came face-to-face with me.

  He cut me dead.

  One by one they swung down the ladder and out of sight. He was the last to go. He hung back for a moment, turned and gave me a quick bow and a grin.

  When we all met on our little games deck, the wireless officer told me how the formidable lady in uniform – she was, we supposed, some kind of commissaress – strode into his office and without a word wrenched out the salient fuses from his equipment, dropped them in a repellant reticule and strode out again. As far as the outside world was concerned we were now incommunicado.

  For that night, all next day and the following night, we remained at anchor in the roads and no one paid the smallest attention to us. The Captain became apoplectic. It was rumoured that the delay was costing his company £300 a day. On the third morning, very early, and against orders, he caused a loud and long blast to be sounded on the ship’s siren. It woke me for a moment but I fell asleep again and the next time I opened my eyes it was to see the flanks of a ship slide past the porthole. We were berthing.

  It took ten days to discharge our wool out of Adelaide for Odessa. First of all the long probes, like skewers, had to be run through each bale. One remembered the old story and wondered, if a spy concealed in one of them would, on being transfixed, ejaculate ‘Baa, baa’.

  While this was being done a guard was mounted alongside us on the wharf. Three armed sentries. Not far away a diver was being lowered into the harbour. The winch was manned by a man and woman – a woman who according to one’s inclinations was either splendidly symptomatic of muscular comradeship and sexual equality or absolutely terrifying.

  Old ladies with headscarves and aprons, straight out of a fairy tale, swept the wharves with witches’ brooms. When, at last, the unloading process was set in motion, one of the gigantic winches was worked by a young and good-looking girl. There she sat, high up in her cabin, like a goddess: Irma was her name, as we were to discover.

  Furious as our Captain was with the port of Odessa he admitted, like the just man he was, that the unloading was the most efficient he had ever encountered. He added (and alas, I have yet to meet a merchant skipper who would not endorse his opinion) that New Zealand ports (’Excuse me. I regret.’) were the slowest in the world. I understand that there is now an improvement.

  By watching the watersiders all day and as long into the night as one was inclined, we discovered that the whole operation was ordered rather on the lines of those enchanting Russian dolls that fit inside each other. There was an overall superintendent of wharf operations and under him a cadre of the second rank who observed the main division of labour and, after these, a watcher male or female to each group of five or six workers. No doubt, at some nerve centre there was a superman observing the superintendent. This made for great speed and efficiency.

  One of the watersiders was in love with Irma. He apostrophized her with all the frustrated ardour of a Romeo, day in and night out.

  ‘E-E-E-Errrma!’

  Sometimes she would incline from her window and roar back at him.

  Not one soul on the wharves or in the ship ever, ever glanced at the passengers. One evening I thought I would try if, by staring at the top of his cap, I could impel the amidships sentry to look up. I got a packet of cigarettes from Dan and leant over the taffrail and stared and stared. It didn’t work. I took a deep breath and let out a gargantuan sneeze. He looked up. I motioned winningly with the cigarettes. He made: ‘Certainly not. On no account’ with his hands and resumed his correct posture.

  Our officers were allowed on shore and had come back with accounts of the unbelievably high cost of almost everything and particularly tobacco. Dusk had fallen. The day shift was gone and the night shift not yet at work. The wharf was deserted. I leant over the taffrail, accidentally dropped the bright green packet of cigarettes on the wharf and walked away quickly. About ten minutes later, I returned and looked down. The packet had gone. The sentry glanced up for a moment.

  I think it was on the following day that our wireless officer returned from a trip ashore to the seamen’s institute or an equivalent establishment. He was
anxious to show Essie and me a pamphlet that had been handed to him. It was in his own language, Norwegian, and was about countries in the British Commonwealth. In New Zealand, it said, the white capitalist reactionaries tortured the Maori slave population.

  After a day or two I found a place on deck where I could sit with a writing block under cover of which I made rough little sketches of people on the wharves. There were sailors with red bobbles on their caps and two ribbons fluttering behind: incredibly hefty lady-water-siders with their broad Slavonic faces tied up like puddings: younger Amazons, still shapely and looking as if they ought to be parading in Red Square with swinging arms and bright ideological smiles. There were all the soldiers and the old sweepers and many beguiling and solemn little children. It would have been fun to come out into the open and frankly draw them all but this was considered inadvisable so I scribbled furtively and not at all well.

  It was while I was doing this that I noticed my friend, the amidships sentry, stoop down and peer into one of a heap of conduit pipes that had been stacked on the wharf. He straightened up and made a signal to a soldier who was standing some distance away. This man came across, stooped, stared and walked rapidly away. Presently a car arrived with a senior-looking officer. There were no civilian cars on the wharves at Odessa. The sentry pointed to the pipe. The officer stooped and extracted from it a scrap of green and scarlet glossy paper. I looked down and saw that this was a corner of a book jacket or magazine cover. The officer drove away. That evening a top-looking brass and some satellites called on the Captain and told him he was to make it clear to everybody in his ship that no paper of any kind must be dropped overboard. All the following day two Russians in a dinghy paddled round the Temeraire’s seaward side, fishing with a net for the most unlovely trouveaux.

  We moved to another berth at the farthest arm of the harbour and continued to discharge wool. There was a military establishment here. Soldiers drilled, ran, fell flat, crawled and ran on again. From a little hut, punctually at three every afternoon, there emerged a small boy wearing a shiny peaked cap, muffler, gloves, belted blouse and baggy trousers. He had in either hand a little sister in headscarf and long full-skirted dress and a staggering baby, also gloved. They took a promenade, not too fast, not too slow and looking neither to right or left. Past the Temeraire and to a certain place on the docks where they wheeled and returned. They were for all the world like a woodcut from a Victorian nursery tale by Mrs Juliana Horatia Ewing: such immensely solemn children and so sedate.