Down The Hatch Read Online Free PDF Page B

round-up. A gigantic nun, wearing a headdress reminiscent of the Medici, was laying about her with an implement which seemed to The Bodger, watching in horrified fascination from Seahorse ’s bridge, to be a crozier. Hats, caps and satchels were falling into the harbour in a steady rain and were being retrieved by an old man in a blue sweater and three days’ growth of white stubble. The old man had not had such a day in his small boat since the time the brewer’s lighter came apart at the seams and four dozen barrels of assorted beers went floating out on the ebb tide.
    When, suddenly, the Seven Schools broke through the police cordon and swept towards the gangway, the Bodger hurriedly left the bridge and went down to the wardroom where he poured himself a stiff whisky and followed it with another. The only other person in the wardroom was Gavin, who was pretending to study a chart.
    “What are you doing, Pilot?” The Bodger asked him.
    “Sailing plan for Exercise Lucky Alphonse, sir.”
    “Never mind about that just now. Get up top and start showing people round.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Shortly there were shrill screams from forward, where Gavin had run into a party of girls from the Secondary Modern School.
    Left alone, The Bodger was settling down to enjoy his whisky when he became aware of a rich north country voice resounding from the control room outside.
    “Bah goom,” said the voice, “Ah wish Ah had a quid for every time Ah’ve whanked one of these.”
    Cautiously, The Bodger peered round the corner of the wardroom door.
    The speaker was a tubby cheerful-looking little man in a brand-new checked sports coat and a blue shirt open at the neck. With him was a lady who was plainly his wife and there were four children, two girls who looked like their father and two boys who resembled their mother, standing in a row which reminded The Bodger of a cocoa advertisement. It was clear that the tubby little man needed nobody to show him around. He was fingering the shining handles lovingly and passing his hands knowingly over the air valves. He sniffed, and a delighted smile of nostalgia spread over his face.
    “Eeh, it hasn’t changed a bit! Diesel an’ cabbage an’ sweat! “
    “ Bert ,” said the wife.
    “Maria, Ah was in these things for four years before Ah married you an’ they were the best years of mah life. Ah was Outside Wrecker and Ah remember one day off Sicily we ’ad something loose in the casing an’ the Captain asks for volunteers to go and fix it. So the Engineer and me goes up and fixes it. When we got down again the Captain said to me, Biggs, he said, thart a brave man, Biggs. If an aircraft’d come while ther were up there Ah’d have to have dived without you. And Ah said, No tha wouldn’t, Ah shut off t’panel afore Ah went, tha couldn’t’ve dived . He just looks at me and when we got back he recommends me for warrant officer! “
    The Bodger enjoyed the story. It had timing, punch, and a moral. Just as The Bodger was returning to his whisky he heard a small girl who was being held up to the after periscope by her mother squeal: “Look mum, it’s in technicolor! “
    A black scowl wiped away The Bodger’s indulgent smile. Up on the casing, in steady rain, Petty Officer Humbold, the Second Coxswain, was showing a party of the general public round the upper deck. The painting and care of the outside of the submarine were the Second Coxswain’s own particular responsibility. He was the Torpedo Officer’s right-hand man when the submarine was entering or leaving harbour. He was a broad-shouldered, bullet-headed man with a torpedo beard and a pugnacious manner, as though he might at any moment punch his audience on their respective noses.
    “Up there,” said the Second Coxswain, pointing at the gangling figure of Ferguson, the Chief Stoker’s storekeeper, who was standing in oil-skins, boots and gaiters by the forward gangway, “we have a sailor who’s known as the Trot