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mean, what did you do when you were stationed out here?'
    'Work,' he replied sullenly. 'I didn't have time to sunbathe. There was a war on.'
    Despite the blowers being on full blast and the porthole wide open, our cabin on the port side (facing the supposedly cooler east bank) still reverberated with heat like the sides of a blast furnace. Luncheon consisted of a green salad in a bowl immersed in a tray of ice. Even the sliced roast beef was served on plates set in beds of ice. Icecream, provided in greased paper cups with a wooden spoon like a miniature canoe paddle, melted in minutes into a thick, warm, vanilla drink.
    My mother spent the afternoon wallowing in the ship's minuscule swimming pool or lounging in a deckchair, 'doing a reptile', as she referred to it. She wore tight, brief shorts and a blouse with flounced sleeves: it was to become her informal norm for the rest of her life in the tropics. Meanwhile, my father pretended he was the officer of the watch. He busied himself with his binoculars, watching out for shipping coming the opposite way through the canal and dhows that looked as if they had recently set sail out of the pages of the child's illustrated edition of the Old Testament which Granny had given me the previous Christmas. She was a Salvationist.
    Gradually, the Corfu edged by the town of Ismailia and entered the Bitter Lakes. The desert receded and the air cooled slightly. Around dusk, the lights of Port Suez twinkled in the hot night air and, shortly afterwards, we entered the Red Sea which, to my disappointment the following morning, was not in the least red.
    More on-board diversions were planned to stave off boredom. There was a gala and tombola night for the adults and a casino evening. Every day, a sweepstake was held to guess how far the ship had sailed in the previous twenty-four hours. My father addressed this with mathematical precision, filling several sheets of the ship's notepaper with calculations every day. He did not win once. My mother, by pure guesswork and common nous, won three times, my father taking her success with such bad grace that, at the third win, he sulked and retired to his cabin claiming an upset stomach. We did not set eyes on him again until the following day when he complained my mother had not visited him in his sick bed.
    'No, Ken,' she replied, 'I did not. A sick tummy I can fix with chlorodyne but a sick mind's beyond my reach.'
    This did not improve matters and my father continued to brood for another day, his mood only being broken by an invitation from the captain to drinks that evening with a number of other male passengers in or connected with the Royal Navy. Women were excluded. He returned from this party with his plumage puffed up and his head held high.
    A fancy-dress tea party was thrown for the children. I was dressed by my mother as a pirate in a crepe paper cummerbund, one of her head scarves and an eye-patch borrowed from the ship's doctor and painted black with a mixture of indian ink and mascara. A cardboard sword was tucked in the cummerbund and I carried an empty whisky bottle. I took home no prizes. First place was awarded to a tubby boy of twelve whose parents had seized their opportunity in Simon Artz. He wore a pair of round sunglasses, a real cummerbund, baggy pantaloons, Egyptian felt slippers and a fez. A long ivory cigarette holder completed his ensemble. He was King Farouk.
    The ocean provided its own diversions. Dolphins cavorted ahead of the bow wave and we were permitted, under the supervision of a parent and a deck officer, to go for'ard to the f'c'sle (as my father would have it) and look down on them. They were sleek and grey, the colour of torpedoes. On occasion, they swam on their sides, the better to look up at us with an almost human eye. Flying fish scudded over the waves, their fins outspread like grotesque, ribbed wings. Occasionally the wind took them and they glided up on to the deck to be spirited away by the Lascars,