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low-caste Indians who cleaned, painted and polished the ship, who ate them. Off the Horn of Africa, a vast pod of at least fifty whales was sighted, blowing and diving, the huge flukes of their tails rising into the air only to slide under the surface once more.
    Every evening, I lay in my bunk watching the sea speed by and reading or pondering what lay ahead of me. At least I knew the pigtail was unlikely, for my mother had insisted I had a haircut from the ship's barber soon after departing Algiers. But for the rest, I could only let my imagination wander. My father refused point blank to discuss anything about his job, claiming it was top secret. I considered the chances of him being a spy and asked my mother one night as I got ready for bed if this was his role in the Navy.
    'A spy!' she retorted. 'In the Navy? What gave you that idea?'
    'Daddy said his job was secret.'
    'Your father could no more be a spy than I could be a spanner,' she replied, always keen to find an alliterative metaphor. 'He's a Deputy Naval Stores Officer. A naval grocer! It's his job to see ships get fresh supplies of lettuces and eggs. Secret!' She laughed. 'I'm sure the Commies're not interested in how many tins of sardines HMS Ark Royal is carrying.'
    At seven o'clock – or nineteen hundred hours, as my father preferred – my mother, having seen me into my bunk, would join my father on deck for cocktails and dinner. Although, once in the tropics, the formal evening dress code for the dining room was waived unless there was a dinner dance or the like being held, my father insisted on wearing a lounge suit when all that was demanded was a tie. This greatly embarrassed my mother and, one afternoon between Aden and Bombay, it created an argument conducted sotto voce in my cabin. I only heard a part of it, eavesdropping at the door.
    '. . . but it's unnecessary, Ken,' I heard my mother say insistently. 'You stand out like . . . like . . . like a daffodil in a daisy field.'
    'Just because the mercury touches eighty, Joyce, it doesn't mean we have to abandon all our bloody standards.'
    There was a pause.
    'You know what they call you, don't you?' She did not wait for a response. 'Commodore Blimp.'
    'I don't give a bloody damn,' my father answered, yet I could tell his anger had been goaded.
    'And that knotted hankie. I mean! That's setting a standard? You'll be rolling your trouser legs up next. You could at least buy a panama in the shop.'
    'I'll wear what I bloody like, when I bloody like, where I bloody like. It's a free bloody country, thanks to the likes of me.'
    'Here we go,' I heard my mother say with an air of well-tried boredom. 'Tell me, Ken, I forget: which submarine did you serve on? Which Atlantic convoy did you escort? Which landing craft did you command on D-Day?' She fell silent for a moment. 'None. And whose father was imprisoned for three years in Germany after his ship went down under him at the Battle of Jutland? Mine. And whose mother snubs mine because her husband was only a Chief Petty Officer? And you talk of standards. Double standards in your case, Ken. Double standards.'
    There followed a brief scuffling at the end of which there was a loud bang as my father slammed his hand on the wardrobe door. I later saw the dent his signet ring had made in the veneer.
    'Don't you ever speak like that to me again, Joyce, or . . .
    'Or? Or what, Ken? A divorce? My! That would look good on your record sheet, wouldn't it? A real blot rather than a splat of ink. Set tongues wagging in the wardroom. And what about Martin?'
    'What about him ?' my father answered.
    It was then I decided to make myself scarce and scurried away down the corridor. An hour later, my father appeared on the deck wearing a straw panama hat with a dark blue band.
    Shortly before eight o'clock every evening, and the sounding of the chimes for dinner, my mother would return to the cabin with two silver-plated bowls. One contained salted potato crisps, the other small,