Green Linnet
By Harry Nicholson
Published by Smashwords 2011
Copyright of Harry Nicholson
First Edition
The author has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work
Cover art, an enamel by the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder.
Contents
Geese– poem
The Cowshed Wall - story
Hard Struggle Row - poem
Eskdale – poem
Hokkaido The Noo! – story
Autumn of Life – poem
Bos Taurus – poem
Whitby In Sepia – poem
Sea Longing – story
Passage Through Bab el Mandeb – poem
Work Experience – flash fiction
Worm – poem
Armadillo – flash fiction
Bearing Arms – poem
Moorland Stone – poem
Burial Mounds On Canna – poem
The Wireless – poem
Blue Sky – poem
Summit – poem
Green Linnet – poem
Tom Fleck – sample of a novel; chapter 1.
Necks outstretched,
pink feet tucked beneath their tails,
more wild geese cross the coast.
Weary arctic wings straining
to clear the hushed moor.
Two long, wavering skeins -
broadhead arrows in the sky.
The matriarch at the point falls back.
Bleating cries: I'm here! I'm here!
Are you there? - I'm here! I'm here!
They clutch my heart again,
as they do each October.
I’m stirred by something old,
the time of migration.
What is it that I need to do?
'I've still got it, Bill.'
'Got what?’ I take in the groove across Tom's forehead - ploughed there by years of cap wearing.
'That little skull. It’s still in the sack in me rabbit shed. All this time it’s been there and I’ve never looked at it. Can't. Someone will find it when I’m gone, and then what?'
I grunt and glance at my empty glass. ‘Then, soon as we're done here we’ll take it onto moor and bury it. That’ll be a job done.'
‘So, we’d better have another. Same again?’
‘Aye,’ I hand him two bob. 'I'll pay.'
I light my pipe and take my mind back. It was about when the first motor car came up the dale. Funny how our younger years seemed easier to get at as time passes; it's last week that foxes me. But Lumley’s Farm is no bother, it's as clear as a picture.
It must be thirty years ago, yet I still see those empty eye sockets: black with mould; the teeth all there except for two which the little lass must have left out for the tooth fairy. The tuft of hair still stuck to it is copper coloured, just like Missus Lumley’s curls before she went white. I see myself clear as day - a young man with hard muscle and a flat stomach.
Tom puts two pints on the table - they have good heads.
We were pulling down a cowshed wall - so as to take out a bulge and straighten it up. The roof sagged under the weight of crumbling sandstone slates. It was dangerous, so we took off the slates and stacked them, ’heads down’, in the yard. We worked in the first daylight the insides of that byre had seen for a hundred years.
I'd been clearing up the rubble around Tom’s boots as my pal levered away with the wrecking-bar. ‘Farmer built’ it was: a ‘squint-of-eye, crook-of-gob and it’ll-be-reet', sort of a wall. Stuff fell out of the rubble-fill as Tom loosened one course after another: rat bones, spuggy nests, clay pipes, a pot egg for setting under a broody, and a blackened silver fork with but two prongs.
‘I’m keeping an eye on you mind,’ I'd called out. ‘When you get to the bag o' sovereigns I want my share.’ Then - before Tom could answer - the skull fell out and he'd jumped back as it tumbled between his legs.
‘This was different,‘ we'd agreed; so the two of us sat down on the rubble and lit our pipes while we mulled over what to do. Tom wasn’t too bothered; he'd seen plenty of loose heads in the Sudan, when he was with Kitchener charging them fuzzy-mopped, camel-riding Dervishes. He still wears his medals to church.
The skull seemed to stare at us from where it had come to rest among the bits of lime mortar and lumps of sandstone. Tom stayed quiet for a bit, then whispered, ’do you think it’s anyone we know?’
‘Well, for a start, I’d say this byre’s at least two hundred year auld. Could be anybody.’ We'd looked at each other for a while; then coughed to get the dust offour chests, took out scraps of cloth and blew our noses, hard.
The woman of the house came out before we'd finished our pipes. A nice woman she was; but gossip said she’d had her troubles, she’d lost a little girl once: just vanished one day and never turned up again. But that was years before.
When we saw her coming, Tom tossed his jacket over the skull. Missus Lumley picked her way through the rubble and put down a tray of tea and scones on a flat stone. She settled her lumpy body onto a stool to have a bit of a natter while we had our break. I remember shifting a bit - the woman’s foot was right next to the coat.
Missus Lumley passed round the scones and mugs of tea. ‘How’s your mam keeping, Bill? Are her legs any better?’
I tapped out my pipe. ‘No, missus, they’re not; it’s the rheumatics.’
Just then Francis walked past the gap in the wall, he was carrying a bucket of swill in each hand. Missus Lumley called out, ‘Brother, your tea’s in here.’
‘I won’t be a minute, Betty. I’ll just look at the sow - to see if she’s ready.’
We watched Francis stop by the sow’s paddock and call her. She trotted over and came alongside the fence. The sun sparkled on her ginger coat as she turned on her long legs. I could tell Francis was fond of the sow - by the way he picked up a yard brush and gave her back a scratch.
‘She loves this,’ Francis called out. ‘Likes her itches seeing to - her eyes are shut wi' the pleasure of it.’
I thought: even though folk say he’s a hard one, the man's got tender innards. We watched Francis lean over and press his hand down onto the sow’s back. If her back stayed stiff and didn’t sag it meant she was ready for the boar.
‘Will you have another scone, Bill?’ Her faded green eyes twinkled a bit.
‘Thanks, missus. They’re just right.’ While chewing the scone, I watched Francis carefully open the gate to the boar’s pen.
The beast gave a loud squeal and Francis cursed and tried to shut the gate as the boar forced its great red head through the gap. Francis yelled out over the noise of splintering wood. The Tamworth knocked him off his feet then rived at him with its mucky yellow tusks. Missus Lumley set off running, but her foot got caught in the coat and pulled it away behind her. The skull rolled over so that its little eye sockets stared up and out of the cowshed and into the sky. But the woman hadn’t noticed. She ran - pinny flying - across the yard shouting, ‘Francis! Francis!’
I ran after her, carrying the big iron wrecking bar. Behind me, Tom scooped up the skull, shoved it into a sack, then followed us with a shovel.
That poor soul. I stare at the beer - the head's starting to sink. She'd nursed her brother and his wound for a fortnight while the pig poison went through him. It set his veins on fire before he died.
I consider Francis again. A dark bachelor man. Kept to himself. Used to wander about, muttering. Wouldn’t look you in the eye. Folk kept out of his way.
Missus Lumley was the only woman at the funeral. But the farmers had turned out in strength - they had respect for the man's ploughing. I can still see the rows of them; all in black, hair combed flat, sitting upright in the pews .
The sound of dottle being scraped out of a pipe, breaks my thoughts.
‘Have you nodded off, Bill? That beer’s gone flat.’
‘Sorry, Tom, I was miles away - thinking of Francis Lumley; he was an odd one.’
‘Aye - but he was worth listening to, if you got him talking. He was fed up with living in that auld house. Told me the sun had to burn on it for three month afore the damp cleared. His best coat was mouldy and smelt bad - he reckoned no lass would come near him like he was. It was getting him down; every night that same lumpy auld bed, on his own, freezing cold. He had a brother who ran away to sea to get shot of the father's hard driving. Francis reckoned his brother to be on some tropical island with dancing girls and wearing good boots and a fine hat.’ Tom laughs out loud and half-chokes himself with beer.
I wait for him to get his breath back. ‘Did Missus Lumley ever have a husband?’
‘She never did. There was just the two of them - brother and sister, unwedded, getting auld together. Sad really. Folk didn't ask about the husband she never had; she was just Missus Lumley - a woman who’d lost a little lass.’
‘And the father of the lass? I heard Francis knew who he was.’ I keep my voice down.
‘Yes, he reckoned it was some waster who walked the ‘Entire’ round the farms. I remember that hoss: he was a big black Clydesdale, the sort with a deep chest and massive quarters. He'd hooves that would smother a dinner plate. He were fed like a fighting-cock, and never ridden so as to keep all his strength for covering the mares. They say the walker of the Entire was just as randy as the stallion itself. By all accounts Francis gave the walker a good thumping for what he did to his sister.’
After draining our pints we go out into the mild October light. We walk slowly up the track - our boots crunching on the cinders - stopping to inspect the allotments. A grand row of leeks here, Brussels Sprouts coming on there. Then past funny little Stan, rattling his tin of peas at his circling pigeons, shouting out, 'Howway ya buggers, get thee sens in!'Then between Tom’s muck heaps - built up with railway sleepers - and into his hut.
I sniff. Breathe in whiffs of fresh sawdust, oats, bran and sweet hay, all spiced with the tang of rabbits. ’Aye aye.’ I sigh a bit. ‘You can’t beat the smell of a well-kept rabbit hut'.
‘Sit yourself on that stool, Bill,’ Tom says, as he spreads his backside across a feed bin.
'Have you seen this youth?' He points to a Belgian Hare buck, then opens the hutch to reach in. His stubby fingers pick up the rabbit and gently lift him out. He puts the buck onto the grooming bench so that it can move about. As it hops forward, its body quivers and the coppery coat flashes, like fire, in the sun-shine that comes through the cobwebbed window. ‘Have you enough light there, Bill? I always leave a few spider webs to keep a check on the flies.’
I say, 'By heck! Yon’s a beauty; look at the way he holds himself - and that grand colour. You’ll clear the decks wi' that youth when you start showing him. I doubt if I’ll ever see a Belgian so fit.'
'Well - I was going to pack them in, but then he turned up in a litter of four. I was thinking of building up the Blue Beverens; but now he’s come, I’ll be running the Hares on a bit longer. You can have a mating off him - after he’s been shown.'
We sit for a while, quiet, with the door open so that our pipe smoke won't make the rabbits sneeze. Then Tom pulls his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and looks at the time. He twists around, rummages under a pile of hessian sacks, and pulls one out from the bottom. 'Here it is. I‘ll get a spade'.
An hour later sees us on the high moor. It's hard going - we're thick round the middle now - so we stand on the crag breathing hard. Lumley's Farm is far below.
‘By! I’m as lathered as a hoss from that climb,’ Tom gasps.
Side by side we take in the cool air.
'This spot will do,' we agree. He digs a pit among the heather roots while I gather up rocks. Then he spreads a square of green velvet in the hole. ‘This is just a scrap that’s been in the wife’s remnant drawer for years. Take her out of the sack, Bill.’ He has a slight crack in his voice.
‘There now . . . There now.’ My pal sets the lass carefully on the green velvet and smoothes down the one clump of auburn hair - a curl springs back and flashes red and gold.
We build a cairn over the spot; it's three-foot tall. We stand in our polished boots for a bit, caps in hands - thinking.
We blow our noses hard, then say to each other, 'Aye, that’ll be reet'. After standing close for a minute or two, we make our way home.
Beneath this black band of tarmacadam
twisting past Hard Struggle Row, hanging
on the hillside, runs a lost green lane
where stained thumbs once brambled.
Where she panted as he pulled away her wimple
to see the glinting waves of copper fall
across freckles, while green, virginal eyes
framed a solitary white cloud.
Deeper still, an oxcart track skirts a bog
where lies a Saxon axed down by a Dane;
he sleeps above a Celt his forebear felled,
long before William the Bastard came.
Lower down, bones of giant elk tangle
with rhinoceros, mammoth, grey wolf
and one skin-clad man, tanned in peat,
precious knapped flint tightly clutched.
There is a single-track road in Eskdale, North Yorkshire, that runs from Sleights to Grosmont. Half-way along it passes the steep terrace of cottages known as 'Hard Struggle Row'.
Once, this dale was filled
with ice, mumbling to the brim,
shoving ramparts of clay;
now it’s strewn with second homes.
Once, a mammoth crunched this way
on migration, knee deep in frosted tundra,
her tired baby stumbling at her side;
now there’s just the pattering feet of sheep.
Once, Saxon and Dane fought it out
for living space before they wed
together and shared their names;
now men blast pheasants from the sky.
Once, a medieval hermit built a cell
close by the salmon-shivering river;
but the dale got noisy - so he moved away
to Chester le Street to find some peace.
His cell is tumbled now - fouled by cows,
breeders of steaks for the pub trade,
fat limousin and charolais backsides -
they bellow all day for their babies.
Long, long ago, a Japanese war fleet sailed out to conquer Manchuria. It was Friday the 13th and a bad day for crossing the Sea of Japan, for a great, rotating storm came up from the south and swept them all away - scattered them far and wide across the oceans, north to the Bering Strait and south to the ice of Antarctica.
After many an adventure, one band of survivors, in the red rust of their Samurai armour, came in sight of Scotland and put ashore in Caithness. They quickly made themselves at home and set about pressing the inhabitants, the simple Beaker Folk, into service as their personal retainers.
Down the generations they clung to story-tellers' fables of a land of plum and cherry blossom, of delicate bridges across pools filled with beautiful carp. In Caithness, that treeless land of wind-blasted brown bog, they were so fearful of losing their identity that they had their visions of home tattooed upon their faces, torsoes and arms.
We know about these tattoos because the Roman historian Tacitus records that when the Empire’s legions probed the northern limits of Albion they met exceptional resistance. This was said to be in a region called Mons Graupus, in that broad valley now understood to be the Pass of Killiekrankie, just north of Pitlochrie. Here a wild, painted people fought the disciplined ranks of Romans - berserk (without a shirt), exposing, behind the blur of great two-handed swords, strange images in blue on bare, hairless chests. That battle marked the limit of Roman advance in Britain. The retreating legions went back to camp on Hadrian’s Wall with nightmare tales of fleeing before the Pictii (the Picture People). These willow-patterned warriors are honoured to this day, on dinner services manufactured in the Staffordshire Potteries.
The time came when some of the younger and more restless of the painted Picts set off in search of the land of their ancestors. They took with them their Beaker Folk servants.
Their sagas were many as they wandered across the oceans, sternly interrogating every one they met as to the whereabouts of the fabled islands of 'Plum and Cherry Blossom’. Wherever they set foot the inhabitants experienced a cultural shock from which many civilisations, both infant and ancient, never recovered. Their collapsed cities are now only to be wondered at, forgotten and buried, deep in Asian jungles or crumbling away, high on Andean crags.
The wanderers’ fingerprints are everywhere; a long, chaotic trail of cultural and racial paraphernalia reaches into every corner. Notice, dear reader, next time you watch a documentary about the Bushmen of the Kalahari, the curious Mongoloid folds of their eyelids. Recall the great stone statues of Easter Island, and notice the stone Tam o’ Shanters on the heads of the massive gods. The population of remote Easter Island fled in despair, eventually running their canoes onto the shores of the ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’ (New Zealand), which was most unfortunate for the flightless and harmless Moa, wiped out by Palaeo-Maoris in search of sanctuary.
Captured ships swelled the fleet until it had become an armada. As it headed northwards from Easter Island it stumbled into the midst of a furious sea battle between the Straight Hairs and the Crinkly Hairs. Such was the great migration fleet’s fearsome reputation that both forces broke off and scattered immediately. These races are in hiding still, dotted across the Pacific Ocean on the little groups of islands that make up Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Even today, parents in straw huts frighten noisy children into good behaviour with stories of the Blue Patterned Ones who might, at any time, walk out of the sea.
Soon after that encounter, the fleet attacked, pillaged and dispersed a colossal fleet of Chinese war junks. They had now drastically altered the history of the world by disrupting a serious attempt by the Ming dynasty to conquer and colonise Aztec America. However, from a few trembling prisoners, they did at last learn the whereabouts of the lost islands of Japan.
Imagine, dear reader, the surprise of that refined civilisation as it awoke one morning to find a fleet of tattered ships at anchor in Tokyo bay. Spars and rigging of a design not seen before. Barbaric devices on the sails. Hideous dragonheads rearing out over the bows. Beetle-browed and shaggy-faced men on the oars of strange galleys, wailing and yelling in animal tongues. Then - on the decks - striding about as haughty as the emperor, blue-painted men in the armour of the Samurai of a thousand years before. And on their banners, their clan battle-cry in runic Japanese: “It taks a lang spoon to sup wi' the devil or a man frae Fife”.
Politeness being the essence of Japanese society, the strangers were accepted, made comfortable, but kept at arms length on account of the smell. Assimilation was possible, but only just. However, the crude little creatures on the rowing benches, the sensitive Japanese could not tolerate in their midst. They were given an island of their own, to the north, one cold and hard and unwanted, far away from Mount Fuji. There they remain today, archaic, few in number and on the point of vanishing, objects of anthropological study and speculation, the curiously isolated, the supposed Palaeo-Celts, the little, blue-eyed, hairy Ainu of Sakhalin.
Should you incline to scoff at this tale. I refer you to the death verse of Issa (1763 - 1827), the Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū sect - perhaps the last of the great Haiku masters. Its penultimate word is surely a further shred of evidence of the link between Japan and Scotland.
From birthing’s washbowl
To the washbowl of the dead -
Blathering nonsense
Stood on the kerb - traffic blasting dust,
fumes and the thud of brutal songs
into my eyes, nose, ears - I need to retreat
and hang, like a frost-faced ape,
from a branch in the sun -
listen to a woodland glade, to that wren
who shouts its thin, sweet song. Listen
to a slug rasp along a leaf, to the rattle
and clatter of a beetle, to the hiss of sap,
the roar of chlorophyll,
the creak of yawning flowers,
the slurp of a bee’s tongue
and the faint, sandpaper rasp
of Issa’s cowering fly
wringing its hands for mercy.
You can learn things sat concealed
behind a screen of runner beans
twined up bamboo poles and strings.
A hopping robin picks at bits
below the courgette leaves and kale.
Nonchalant, he works closer
till he stops two feet away.
He’s eyeing me with interest - as if
I represent a possibility.
Perhaps he’s been doing this
since the end of the last ice age -
always keeping company with ponderous,
earth-tearing mammals and making
a useful sort of living, off small things
that flit around their ancient feet.
For him, I’m not a gardener,
I’m a great, horned forest ox,
a lumbering, trampling aurochs.
She is frozen for the camera plate;
holds a broad, enamel bowl - chipped.
No studded tongue, no pierced lip,
for this fisher lass, just the sting of salt
in her keened fingers, chapped knuckles
and raw cuticles - painfully sucked.
No Chanel for her - just the purple reek
of mackerel blood, the stink of cod liver.
Nivea never knew these arms, silvered
with herring scale, licked and kissed by fish roe.
Soon the lens cover is replaced, the gent smiles,
a silver three-penny bit is tendered.
But there’s a sudden squall; her eyes turn
quick to the sea to mark its blackness,
the cobles - and her men-folk.
I wish I could go back to sea. I wish I could go down to Hull and sign-on a ship; but I've heard they don't need the Morse Code these days - it's all done with telephones and satellites.
Sometimes I wake up in the early hours, confused, and it's as though I'm still there - back aboard ship:
Voyage of SS Arcadia
Radio Officer's Diary
1972. Pounding down the Solent at twenty-five knots.
Right, I've just made the sailing, found my cabin, put my gear in the drawers after cleaning them out by pouring the golden sand of cockroach eggs over the side. Funny thing I saw as I came up the gangway - millions of cockroaches streaming ashore, why was that? Do they know something?
Can't find the other Sparks. I look for the wireless room. There’s this place behind the wheelhouse - it's locked. Through the porthole I see something move in the gloom. On the desk, I can just make out coffee cups with fungus growing out of them. There's a Canadian Marconi CR100 receiver, but the dial is dead. There seems to be a chair at the desk with something slumped in it. The shape is still and looks withered up as though it's been there 40 years.
Hey! Maybe I'm on the wrong ship.
It’s the middle of a queer sort of night - I haven't slept much. Climb the ladder to the bridge to ask where I might find the key to the wireless room. The ship lurches like an drunk falling away from the bar. There's a lot of crashing noises consequent on the fact that we are, at this moment and in inky, moonless blackness, sliding along the side of an aircraft carrier. In the wheelhouse there's just one chap; he's at the wheel but seems to be in a trance. I put the wheel down sharp, fortunately the right way, and we come away from the carrier, nicely. I feel rather pleased.
There's no key to be found, so I pick up a fire axe. On the way to the wireless room I notice, on the boat deck, a long cylinder thing in a cradle, it looks like one of those rockets the Yanks fired at Baghdad. A US marine is propped up against one of our steam winches, looking dazed.
I chop down the wireless room door and put the lights on. A steward comes in at this point with cocoa and sandwiches.
'Hello, Sparks chuck, I'm Daphne; I look after you.'
He is wearing a fluffy, pink angora jumper that goes nicely with the lipstick. He wants to chat but I growl at him, 'I've a lot to do just now. Would you mind doing something about that withered thing in the chair?'
She calls for another steward. Together they take the thing away - it doesn't seem to weigh much.
The gear springs to life. But I can't register any power into the aerial so I open the front of the transmitter. It's a Siemens SB186X, I'm glad to say - a simple and straightforward, 'tune for maximum smoke and fire', sort of transmitter.
I know the problem and pull out the power valve - a big beam-tetrode with a top cap. Yes, I thought so, a dodgy N4Q2 gone soft. I change it and, straight away, get 120 watts into the aerial.
The crew and passengers have been pestering me, so I've finally got the entertainments receiver working. It’s tuned to BBC radio. It’s also fed by the BBC web site - so it's possible to get the Goon Show and Round the Horn - at least according to the handbook that sits among the husks of old cockroaches behind each of the slave receivers.
I've contacted Niton Radio, Isle of Wight, so the world now knows we've left Southampton and where we are bound. I had some trouble with them; the person on duty seemed to have only a rudimentary grasp of the Morse code. Wanted me to use the radiotelephone - bloody cheek! This is not a trawler!
I'm feeling quite isolated up here; the only person I see is Daphne who keeps bringing me tea and toast. He talks about Botox a lot, but I haven't a clue what she's on about.
I talk to the officer in the chart room sometimes. He keeps rummaging in those very wide drawers looking for something and muttering about plotting a course. He thinks we are in the Channel now on account of the radar not having many echoes. Last night, after we had bounced off the aircraft carrier, there was panic in the wheelhouse owing to the mass of radar echoes all around us. The lookout said it was all right though; it was just some big international yacht race we had steamed through the middle of. He was a bit flushed even so, said he'd never been sworn at like that before.
I was concerned when that huge Greek tanker cut across the bows. The chaps on the bridge were jumping up and down and sounding the horn. All we could see alive on the Greek was a dog on the monkey-island. It barked at us as we veered off.
I think I'll go to bed now. In my bunk, the Auto Alarm distress bell is right next to my ear. I wrap a sock around the clapper.
I've woken up from a big dream to do with breaking through into an alternative universe. There is a definite rolling motion and the curtains seem to be moving. Infinitely slowly it dawns on me that I'm at sea and have a watch to keep. Confused, and still partly in the dream, I shoot upstairs and am relieved to find the wireless room door intact. I've a memory of chopping it down with a fire-axe.
Through the hatch to the chartroom a smart officer in blues wishes me a good morning. I ask about the aircraft carrier we collided with last night. He gives me a queer look and says, i n a posh accent,should take more water with it. I bet he's a P&O wallah - ah well . . . The motor alternators begin to whine and the gear slowly warms up while I twiddle my thumbs and gaze about.
The calendar on the bulkhead says, 13th November 1972. The reciever bursts into life at full belt! Signals come through the CR 300:GNI de MRSQ at a crashing level. I look out of the porthole and there is the "Maskeliya" going by at a clip! And I'm young again!
A steward in a pink sweater minces in with coffee and sandwiches and wants to know if I want anything on my bar bill. I sign a chit for a bottle of gin, a tin of Anton Justman's hand-rolling Long Shag, some papers and a block of Fair Maid for the pipe.
I unwrap the sandwiches and a cockroach scurries out; the filling is rare cold beef. I'm confused - in 20 years time I'll become vegetarian . . . But not yet - so I tuck in. The coffee is awful.
Who is in charge? Who is the Captain? So far I've not seen four rings on a sleeve. There's a lot of noise from the engine room; I hope we have proper engineers down there, not just Glasgow bicycle fitters.
I'd assumed we were past Ushant by now. I've been doing cocked hats with the Direction Finder and handing them through the hatch into the chartroom. At first there was disbelief on the bridge at my bearings, but since I scraped the paint off the DF loop's insulators and dropped the engineers’ private aerial rigs, all is satisfactory.
But I'm happy now. I've cleared the cockroaches out of the gear (they were sitting around the valves, keeping warm) and I'm enjoying talking to old friends with the Morse key.
It was good to eat in the saloon today for the first time; I'd been living on Daphne's sandwiches up.
Will the surgeon come up to the wireless room please? I don't feel very well.
(Shaking hand switches on the rotary transformer, switches on transmitter. The bottle neon on the bulkhead is glowing a lovely pink and flickers when I press the key. The ships cat is sitting on the receiver trying to catch the flickering with its paw.)
We were pitching a bit last night - with high winds coming up from the Southwest; we were heading straight into it, so it wasn't too bad. Even so, there was not much call for bacon and eggs in the saloon this morning. The cat spent most of the storm curled up in a bed I've made for her in the motor cupboard, she opens her eyes only when the generator starts up next to her.
We are now passing Cape Finisterre. A number of well-wrapped passengers are taking the fresh air and gazing at the massive black cliffs. The purser does a running commentary through the tannoy; he's getting on my nerves. With glasses, you can just make out the remains of that Liberian who steamed straight onto Finisterre last year, its radar going round and round and, no doubt, the ship's dog barking at the lighthouse-keeper as she thumped up the beach.
I get Daphne to take a note to the engine-room: 'I'm having trouble with one of the generators; the brushes are sparking more than I care for. When I get a chance to strip it down can I bring the rotor to the engine room and ask some kind chap to put it on the lathe and, ever so gently, skim the commutator?'
Daphne comes back with a flushed face. 'The nice, young engineer says he'll be happy to, ever so gently, skim your commutator . . . and mine too.'
As it’s a fine day I'm checking the installations in the two motor lifeboats. This causes some interest and I've an audience of passengers. One of them is an Australian divorcee by the name of Enid Clump. I have to tell you that I'm on a rota of officers obliged to dine with the passengers. Since dinner last night, Missus Clump seems to have taken an interest in me. Anyway, I'm checking the specific gravity of the electrolyte in the lifeboat batteries when she calls out.
'Hey, Sparky dear.'
This causes me to knock the hydrometer against the lifeboat gunwale. The rubber bulb comes off the end and the front of my battledress is sprayed with sulphuric acid. I know from experience that in a few days time the front of the jacket will fall to bits.
Fortunately, we get into Lisbon tomorrow morning. I'll need to see if there's a naval outfitters in town. I only have my one doe-skin uniform for best, it used to belong to my brother in law, he gave it to me when he left Elder Dempster’s, but it's seen better days. I'm a bit ashamed to say that the Purser has called on me with a message. Apparently the captain has noticed that I look a bit shabby and - as this is P&O - demands that I do something about it. So I found some scissors in the wireless room and spent time on watch trimming the raggy bits off the cuffs.
I never had this sort of thing on Brocklebanks - Captain Saxty would not have said such a thing. I'm only on secondment to this ship because they are short handed and Brocks have surplus staff just now. This station is a Marconi rig and I keep getting messages from Marconi's office in Chelmsford asking all sorts of questions. I try to be polite, but years ago, in Hull,I told them to stuff their job.
Strange that! Went on watch at 1000 hrs. and found the wireless room locked! Went to the wheelhouse and asked why, but no one would talk to me; everyone on duty was focused on the fact that we were about to enter Lisbon and the Portuguese pilot was in charge.
I should have been on duty, at least to contact the local Radio, but I was up most of the night and am worn out. When I went back to the wireless room, I found it open again . . .About 0200 this morning we had picked up three swarthy fishermen from a capsized sardine boat. They were in a bit of a state and are in the hospital now, being warmed up. They say they were run down in the dark by something huge. That object had been dead ahead on the radar for a while. At 0330 we passed it: a massive Russian floating dock attended by a swarm of tugs, moving slowly to the Black Sea from the Baltic. I tried to make contact, but it’s a waste of effort, the Russians rarely speak unless they're in trouble. They're still not signatories to the International Communication Charter and don't keep the same watches as the rest of the world. You rarely hear them on 500 k/cs. They even have a different Morse code - just to keep everything secret and everyone confused. The bridge called them up on the Aldis, but got no reply.
The coffee is a good deal better now.
Lisbon
There was a long line of gharries waiting as we tied up, they filled with passengers and trotted off to town, harnesses jangling and red tassels bouncing. It was easy finding a naval outfitters, up a back street near the waterside. The man who ran it was a decent sort, quiet and silver haired.
In the back, he had a good deal of second hand stuff which I poked around in. Some of the 'blues' looked rakish and unBritish; he said he'd got them years ago off the officers of the "Altmark". What I came away with will do but might need taking in a bit.
I had a look round town, a handsome place totally rebuilt after the great earthquake. Walked back and in a gritty area was drawn to singing I heard coming from a bar. A lot of our engine room crowd was inside and I was grabbed and pushed among them. They were having a good time and the place was full, everyone off the street was drawn in by the singing. At one point we tried to leave for pastures new, but the barman stopped us. He said, "Gentlemen, please stay, all I ask is you keep singing. So long as you sing - you drink on the house. You bring me much good business".
I am a bit frayed round the edges now but happy to be told by the Fifth engineer that he would be pleased to skim my commutators anytime.
Sparks Journal... Arcadia 24 Jan 1972
We should have sailed an hour ago but apparently, not everyone is back aboard (how they know that is a mystery). For the last hour, the steam horn has been blaring loud and deep in the hope that people will get a move on. A group of passengers has just scurried aboard looking very sheepish and behind them, a couple of deckhands, with a lady passenger on each arm, are tottering along the quay singing: 'Take my tip, pack your grip, I’m not coming back next trip, blackbird bye bye . . .' etc.
Before that, the Purser came back from the police station, in the Dutch consul's car, having defused a diplomatic incident. Our Dutch carpenter Gustav Van Tromp and the Maltese donkeyman, in a cafe/bar had apparently insulted a picture of the dictator Salazar and then spent the night in the police station under interrogation.
I see we are now casting off even though one two passengers, an elderly Belgian detective and his frail secretary, have not appeared.
Et In Arcadia Ego
Just arrived at Gibraltar, weather on the way very fresh. Daphne is altering the uniform I bought in Lisbon to make it look more British, he reckons it probably is off the "Altmark". He seems to have trouble measuring my inside leg; has fumbled about and made several attempts. I hear they sell fish and chips in Gib, so I'm off ashore to get some as I can't face yet another braised ox tail tonight.
Sparks log, back of a beer mat, Gib. 1972
I'm sat in this pub, I've tried several but cannot find a quiet bar anywhere. The place is full of raucous tourists; the women seem to be making most of the noise. One of our lady passengers cornered me and gave me a load of women's lib stuff, said she was a poetry publisher but only for women writers - men not allowed.
I'm thinking about my future. What am I doing on this big white ship? I'm more used to just fourteen Brits, the odd Dutchman, forty-odd Lascars and maybe a Goanese cook.
I see into the future and scribble this on a Tuborg mat:
"Women Writers Only"
So, the gentlemen’s bars are gone.
Sailors have to duck under lines of knickers.
There is nowhere now that a man can be a bloke
Without having some bare-midriffed Kylie walk in,
Pint in hand, smoking, swearing, spitting;
But WE are to be kept out of THEIR poetry anthologies.
I think I'm depressed.
But - Et In Arcadia Ego
Just been ashore to collect the new radio officers, Chelmsford have sent them out post haste when they realised I was running a 24 hr. wireless room on my own. One is from Greenock and the other from Wexford, which should be interesting.
Was accosted in the street by that Australian divorcee Enid Clump, she wanted me to go back with her to the police station. She had been asked to leave the premises. She was outraged. Apparently, one of the rock apes had stolen her handbag. She wanted the police to go and shoot them all. The police had said 'Madam if we shot all the apes then the British would have to leave Gibraltar, now you wouldn't want that would you?'
I see the elderly Belgian detective and his secretary have arrived from Lisbon by road - they look a bit weary.
Overheard on the Rock as the Barbary apes contemplate the British football fans who have taken over Gibraltar town:
"If that's where six million years of evolution get you, I'm going to stop banging the rocks together"
29 Jan 1972
Still in Gib.
Everything has come to a halt with this voyage. There are problems at head office; I am not privy to this as the 'powers that be' on this ship are ashore with the Agents making phone calls. I hear gossip though. Apparently, there is a crisis, the company is being sued over the use of the name Arcadia on this ship as she is not the real Arcadia but is a masquerader. Arcadia is the privileged name of P&O (apart from a seine netter at Scarborough and a crabber at Wick). So this is not P&O, there has been some skulduggery and everyone has been duped. At the bottom of it all is some shady London Greek outfit - Styx Shipping.
30 Jan 1972
Rumour is rife this morning. Some say a consortium is buying us out and that this Arcadia will be renamed. Some say we will become the "Cervantes" or the "Don Quixote", others say the "Baron Munchausen". We remain in Gib. A few passengers have walked off. In the wireless room, we are stripping down the generators and getting the commutators skimmed in the engine room in exchange for a few beers.
Paddy, the new 2nd R/O is quite happy as long as we don't go to Capetown, apparently he jilted the Mayor's daughter and dare not show his face there. His main peculiarity is his suitcase full of ties - he collects them and takes them everywhere. Robert from Greenock is brand new and has not been to sea yet, he seems a typical Clydesider; been explaining to me how Captain Cook was actually a Scotsman. Where have I heard that before?
31 Jan 1972
Still in Gibraltar. Information coming in about our new owners; a consortium of financiers and interested speculators. There is a long list posted up outside the Writers Office, a quick scan reveals: Stavros Niarchos, Aristotle Onassis, Constantine Papadopoulos, Walt Disney, Viscount The Lord Rothermere of Fleet, The Dowager Marchioness of Holderness, Nubar Gulbenkian, Vera Lynn... and down at the bottom: Lord Lucan, James Shand of Fife, Will Fyffe of Dundee and George Robey of Suez.
The emigrant families seem to be oblivious of all this, just enjoying an unexpected holiday and going ashore for fish and chips. Some of them are from the West Durham coalfield, the men have just recently stopped wearing their caps; you can see the ridges embossed across their white foreheads. One family have gone home though, the father was missing his whippets. I've heard that another has smuggled his prize canaries aboard and that they can be heard singing if you walk down a certain alleyway.
Spark's journal 1 Feb 1972
Daphne has just been in with my altered uniform for a fitting, there are still problems with the inside leg measurement but the jacket no longer looks as though it belonged to Admiral Doenitz. He tells me the Office has revealed our new name. It seems the rich Greeks in the consortia along with uncle Nubar have been very gallant and asked the Dowager Marchioness of Holderness to rename the vessel. She wants to recall an 18th C. ancestor and merchant venturer who sank two galleys of Barbary corsairs which attacked his ship "The Rose in June" not far from here. Therefore, the "Arcadia" is to be renamed "The Coast of Barbary".
Spark's notepad; "SS Coast of Barbary" 2nd Feb 1972
We are away at last. Lord Lucan and Vera Lynn have joined us as interested part owners with one sixty-fourth share each.
All were looking forward to getting into the Med. but its cold, nobody is on deck except for a muffled up man exercising a whippet; the sky is lowering and there's a horrible chop. Weather reports say that there is something nasty coming this way out of the Gulf of Lyons.
Daphne has just been in with the tea, says he does not want to be known as Daphne anymore as he's fallen in love with an Australian divorcee lady who wants to take him home to Wollongong.
We are ok in the wireless room now that we've got the Gestetner process sorted out. Ever since the UK there have been complaints about the absence of the ships newspaper. I didn't know about that one! Having to sit and take down a small newspaper everyday in Morse, then type it up onto a special pallet for the Gestetner before it goes to the Pursers Office. Paddy from Wexford is brilliant he can type it straight onto the Gestetner form, into his headphones and straight onto the Underwood. I used to do that on the "Dunera" but am out of practice.
SS "Coast of Barbary". Spark’s log 3 Feb 1972, off Cap Bon.
That nasty weather out of the Gulf Of Lyons was a bit black and green, some passengers are complaining the Mediterranean bears no likeness to the photos in Thomas Cook's brochure and reckon they’ll be writing to the Times about it. I suppose it’s fair enough; they weren't to expect us to be steaming through squalls of sleet between the Balearics and Sicily.
In the wireless room there are now two cats, the one we already had, and the one that Paddy discovered when he was having a pee up a back lane in Gib. Both share a bed in the motor cupboard and seem good friends.
I'm wearing the uniform I got in Lisbon, it fits well enough but I noticed the Captain glaring at me in the saloon when I was in there doing my onerous turn at dining with the first class passengers. I was seated next to Vera Lynn and Herkule Poirot; Vera Lynn was making a great fuss of the Belgian gent. Lord Lucan was further down the table boasting about his prowess at the roulette wheel. I don't think I'm cut out for this sort of thing, I'm praying they don't ask me where I'm from.
Apart from that, we have a problem in the engine room, one of the big cooling fans has been making a terrible noise and so we are putting into Malta for repairs. The trio of Maltese donkeymen has been dancing a jig.
Spark's log Malta 5 Feb 72
We are at the moorings in the Grand Harbour. The jolly boats are back and forth continually, passengers coming back loaded with shopping and then ashore again in their best gear for a night out in Valetta. The three of us in the wireless room are just off and we are taking Daphne with us. He is in a bit of a state, Mrs. Clump, his Australian divorcee 'intended' has thrown him over in favour of a hairdresser. We think the best thing for him is to take him up 'The Gut' for a night out with the lads. He's been very kind to us three and so we are going to get him sorted out with a good woman.
Our Dutch carpenter has been ashore already; the police have just brought him back, along with two greasers. All three were creating a nuisance by insulting behaviour in front of a poster of Dom Mintoff shaking hands with Colonel Gadaffi.
Our crew has been asked to keep away from Straight Street (otherwise known as 'The Gut') as the Royal Navy is in port this week and it can get a bit lively.
Next morning. “Coast Of Barbary” 6 Feb 1972 Malta
That was a good night out. Straight Street is only 10 foot wide, door to door, but long; I suppose that’s why it’s known as “The Gut”.
First, we went into “Larry’s Bar” and settled in a corner, the four of us trying not to catch the eye of a group of submariners at the other end. Paddy from Wexford (2nd radio officer) is a kind soul and is doing his best to cheer up Daphne the steward who is not himself since Enid Clump chucked him. Fortunately, we’ve got Daphne to dress down and not wear his usual gear; there’s a few Royal Navy craft in the dockyard and we don't want a brush with the matelots tonight.
After that, into the “Blue Peter Bar” and straight away we are eyed up by some matronly ladies and we end up buying them drinks; they are looking for trade. They are interesting to talk to and I enjoyed hearing the stories about the RAF pilots they gave comfort to during the siege. We tell them that they each earned a share of that George Cross. They seem happy just to sit round the table with us. Rob from Greenock says it’s weird 'cos’ they're nearly as old as his mother'. I say, 'what do you expect? It’s thirty years since the war'. Rob reckons they should get some sort of pension off the British Government for their contribution to the war effort.
A good while later, after a some pie and peas a bit further up the Gut, we dive into the “Union Jack Bar” which is noisy, fuggy and standing room only. There’s a crowd off a frigate mixed up with some of our engine room - singing. Then Vera Lynn walks in on the arm of the Belgian detective attended by our 2nd mate. She had insisted on being brought here. The room goes quiet and then there is uproar as she is led to the bar and made a fuss of. She ends up singing “We’ll Meet Again”; you can hear a pin drop.
Finally - stray notes on back of a beer mat - at sea heading for Port Said, 7 Feb 72
The engine room draught fan is repaired, a sweeping brush had been left propped up inside it by the contractors in Southampton; eventually it fell into the blades.
Just before we sailed we had to fish Lord Lucan out of the harbour; he had tried to end it all after losing heavily at poker to Jack Spot. Mr. Spot has been keeping a low profile, him being a Soho gang leader who had decided to retire after he was knifed by the competition. He seems to know our carpenter!
Daphne is much better now; he enjoyed the night out but can’t remember much about it.
(A memory of the Brocklebank steamer SS Marwarri,
out of the Mersey, bound for India in 1960)
The steam turbine throbs down the Red
Sea road, through the oiled steel deck,
the rust-streaked hull, in the dreaded
dripping sweat of the Red Sea road.
You have never seen such colour,
it’s a molten sea of brass, splashed
across with mazarine, and Mocha
burns in orange low away to port.
The sky, blinding at the zenith,
fades into asses milk along the horizon,
across the ovens of Punt,
Eritrea and the Sudan.
Javelins in volleys -
flying fish pursued by nightmares -
break surface, trailing
necklaces of silver.
Then, like salamanders dancing
in a furnace, tortured islands
rise up twisted dead ahead -
shimmering anvils of the sun.
Vapours exude
out of long-dead mahogany.
Decades of varnish soften
and creep down bulkheads.
The banded funnel exhales
black smoke in rippled pulses
that hover, then drift away astern.
The phosphor-bronze screw thuds out
the passage of time. But
the crew are ghosts in history now,
scraps of memory, as the old ship glides
through the Gates. of Weeping
(Bab el Mandeb translates as “Gates of Weeping” - they are the straits at the southern end of the Red Sea across which slaves were carried out of Africa to the markets of Arabia)
‘This is it,’ the foremen said. ‘Get what tools you’ll need off the lorry. You’ll be wanting a strimmer and a can of petrol, some loppers, and don’t forget your hard hat, earmuffs and goggles.’
Tom jumped out of the cab and climbed into the back of the truck. He chose his tools and threw them into the long grass at the side of the track. ‘How long will I be here?’ he shouted out over the noise of the engine.
‘I’ll be back for you at four-o’clock. Have you brought your dinner and flask? Start wherever you want and I see how you’ve got on when I pick you up.’
The foreman put the truck into gear and slowly reversed two-hundred yards until he got to the tarmac lane where he revved up and drove away.
Tom carried his gear up to the chapel entrance and put it down. He shivered in the cold wind so he zipped up his coat, moved into the shelter of the chapel’s porch and looked across the graveyard. There’s a week’s work here for two men, he mused. He took out his tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette while he considered where he should make a start.This was his new start as well, he thought. It’s only a fortnight since I finished the drug rehab and I’m lucky to have the job. Mind you, he reflected, English Heritage were keen on my degree in horticulture, so I might do OK with them. They’ve just took over this place since they found out it’s mostly Saxon.
He finished his smoke, picked up the loppers and trudged into the graveyard. He walked into the middle of the burial ground and looked about. Fifty yards away the chapel crouched among elderberry saplings that sprouted from its foundations. Headstones leaned like drunks at a bar. Ivy clambered over some of them; it seemed to be trying to tear them down with gnarled fingers.He ripped away a patch. The suckers gave up their grip with a dry tearing sound. The script was cut deep. He read: Henry Dobson of Cauld Knuckles Farm 177. . . , the rest had shaled away.
Some stones were on their faces and might have been fallen for years. The only eyes to be inspecting those names would belong to black beetles.A group of yellow sandstone markers huddled nearby. The weather had clawed away every sign of lettering. Next to these stood a tall marker with carved shoulders. He read Dorothy Sw . . . , there was no more; the surface had been shivered off by frost.
He noticed a dark yew tree with a dry stone wall on two sides. It caught his interest. The few branches the old yew still possessed were bent and twisted, they leaned upon the ground like an aged man stooped over walking sticks. The rest of the tree was broken down and decayed in the heart. Fifteen hundred years old, perhaps.
A few yards away a large square of ground had been cordoned of with opulent iron railings. They were rusted and thin - a good kick and they would collapse. They guarded a mausoleum as tall as a guardsman; it leaned like a badly loaded ship. One of the miniature Ionic columns had detached itself; it lay prostrate, its moss-spotted white marble gleamed through the bracken. Something had been digging under the tomb; perhaps a badger.
He read the inscription on the tomb: Marmaduke Weastall, Kt. Colonel of37th Regiment of Foot.Below that the marble slab had slipped forwards so that he was unable to read further. Instead, in the gloom, he thought he could see the dull gleam of bones.
The pavement is hot.
A large nocturnal worm -
caught out - hardens.
All energy reserves gone,
all moisture expended,
it dries out - slowly.
It is dying, but
I must hurry for the post.
Letters gone,
I think to rescue her,
but she has become
a withered twig.
I lay her gently
under a cool bank,
cover her with grass,
thinking -
I could have given her a chance.
At dinner, I wind moist spaghetti
around a fork.
Once upon a time, “Rattlebag”, the armadillo was clattering across the gravels of a chilly shore in Patagonia. It was nearly sunrise and so he hurried; he remembered that only last week his sister, “Tickleslap”, was carried away by the wild men who were always lighting fires on the cliff top.
He thought about that as he hurried to his hole in the rocks, taking care to keep well clear of the fallen tree under which the big snake lived. He should be grieving, he supposed, but he couldn’t get beyond the memory of how she always got the best of mother’s teats. She was bigger than him and grew faster - not surprising really, she always had the warmest spot in the middle of the nest. He would be squeezed out to the edge so that he caught all the draughts and was the first to squeal when the snake came down.
So really, all things considered, he had to admit he wasn’t too bothered, he even found it hard work to feel a bit guilty about not being bothered. As he reached his hole he realised he felt quite disconnected from the problems of others.
Daybreak came and he had just got settled into bed when he heard men’s rough voices and a thudding and a clattering. The burrow collapsed and iron spades crashed about him. As he was thrown into a sack he caught the words, 'that's enough of those armoured, articulated animals, let’s get them back aboard the Beagle'.
No longer do the heralds appear
with fanfares at the gates
on their infrequent visitations
to cold, northern manors.
They came every few generations
across the Tees, hawking noble phlegm
into the mist - braving the kine-clagged
yards of armigerous yeomen.
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