Under the Volcano (21 page)

   
But his success was already beginning
to wear off a little. For one thing a premium was required (his aunt had paid
the premium) and the songs themselves were not to be published for several
months. And it struck him, more than prophetically as it happened, that these
songs alone, while both of the requisite thirty-two bars, of an equal banality,
and even faintly touched with moronism--Hugh later became so ashamed of their
tides that to this day he kept them locked in, a secret drawer of his
mind--might be insufficient to do the trick. Weil, he had other songs, the
tides to some of which,
 
Susquehanna
Mammy, Slumbering Wabash, Mississippi Sunset, Dismal Swamp , etc., were perhaps
revelatory, and that of one at least,
 
I'm Homesick for Being Homesick
 
(of being homesick for home), Vocal Fox Trot, profound, if not
positively Wordsworthian...
   
But all this seemed to belong in the
future. Bolowski had hinted he might take them if... And Hugh did not wish to
offend him by trying to sell them elsewhere. Not that there were many other
publishers left to try! But perhaps, perhaps, if these two songs
 
did
 
make a great hit, sold enormously, made Bolowski's fortune, perhaps if
some great publicity--
   
Some great publicity! This was it,
this was always it, something sensational was needed, it was the cry of the
times, and when that day he had presented himself at the Marine
Superintendent's office in Garston-Garston because Hugh's aunt moved from
London north to Oswaldtwistle in the spring--to sign on board the
 
S.S. Philoctetes
 
he was at least certain something sensational
had been found. Oh, Hugh saw, it was a grotesque and pathetic picture enough,
that of the youth who imagined himself a cross between Bix Beiderbecke, whose
first records had just appeared in England, the infant Mozart, and the
childhood of Raleigh, signing on the dotted line in the office; and perhaps it
was true too he had been reading too much Jack London even then,
 
The Sea Wolf , and now in 1938 he had
advanced to the virile
 
Valley of the
Moon
 
(his favourite was
 
The Jacket ), and perhaps after all he did
genuinely love the sea, and the nauseous overrated expanse was his only love,
the only woman of whom his future wife need be jealous, perhaps all these
things were true of that youth, glimpsing probably, too, from afar, beyond the
clause Seamen and Firemen mutually to assist each other, the promise of
unlimited delight in the brothels of the Orient--an illusion, to say the least:
but what unfortunately almost robbed it all of any vestige of the heroic was
that in order to gain his ends without, so to say, "conscience or
consideration," Hugh had previously visited every newspaper office within a
radius of thirty miles, and most of the big London dailies had branch offices
in that part of the north, and informed them precisely of his intention to sail
on the
 
Philoctetes , counting on the
prominence of his family, remotely "news" even in England since the
mystery of his father's disappearance, together with his tale of his songs'
acceptance--he announced boldly that all were to be published by Bolowski--to
make the story, and hence supply the needed publicity, and upon the fear
engendered by this that yet more publicity and possibly downright ridicule must
result for the family should they prevent his sailing, now a public matter, to
force their hand. There were other factors too; Hugh had forgotten them. Even
at that the newspapers could scarcely have felt his story of much interest had
he not faithfully lugged along his bloody little guitar to each newspaper
office. Hugh shuddered at the thought. This probably made the reporters, most,
in fact, fatherly and decent men who may have seen a private dream being
realized, humour the lad so bent on making an ass of himself. Not that anything
of the sort occurred to him at the time. Quite the contrary. Hugh was convinced
he'd been amazingly clever, and the extraordinary letters of
 
"congratulation" he received from
shipless buccaneers everywhere, who found their lives under a sad curse of
futility because they had not sailed with their elder brothers the seas of the
last war, whose curious thoughts were merrily brewing the next one, and of whom
Hugh himself was perhaps the archtype, served only to strengthen his opinion.
He shuddered again, for he
 
might
 
not have gone after all, he might have been
forcibly prevented by certain husky forgotten relatives, never before reckoned
with, who'd come as if springing out of the ground to his aunt's aid, had it
not been, of all people, for Geoff, who wired back sportingly from Rabat to
their father's sister:
 
Nonsense.
Consider Hugh's proposed trip best possible thing for him. Strongly urge you
give him every freedom. --A potent point, one considered; since now his trip
had been deprived neatly not only of its heroic aspect but of any possible
flavour of rebellion as well. For in spite of the fact that he now was
receiving every assistance from the very people he mysteriously imagined
himself running away from, even after broadcasting his plans to the world, he
still could not bear for one moment to think he was not "running away to
sea." And for this Hugh had never wholly forgiven the Consul.
   
Even so, on the very day, Friday the
thirteenth of May, that Frankie Trumbauer three thousand miles away made his
famous record of
 
For No Reason at All in
C , to Hugh now a poignant historical coincidence, and pursued by neo-American
frivolities from the English Press, which had begun to take up the story with
relish, ranging all the way down from "Schoolboy composer turns
seaman," "Brother of prominent citizen here feels ocean call,"
"Will always return Oswaldtwistle, parting words of prodigy," "Saga
of schoolboy crooner recalls old Kashmir mystery," to once, obscurely
"Oh, to be a Conrad," and once, inaccurately, "Undergraduate
song-writer signs on cargo vessel, takes ukelele"--for he was not yet an
undergraduate, as an old able seaman was shortly to remind him--to the last, and
most terrifying, though under the circumstances bravely inspired. "No silk
cushions for Hugh, says Aunt," Hugh himself, not knowing whether he
voyaged east or west, nor even what the lowliest hand had at least heard
vaguely rumoured, that
 
Philoctetes
 
was a figure in Greek mythology--son of
Poeas, friend of Heracles, and whose cross-bow proved almost as proud and
unfortunate a possession as Hugh's guitar--set sail for Cathay and the brothels
of Palambang. Hugh writhed on the bed to think of all the humiliation his
little publicity stunt had really brought down on his head, a humiliation in
itself sufficient to send anyone into even more desperate retreat than to
sea... Meantime it is scarcely an overstatement to say (Jesus, Cock, did you
see the bloody paper? We've got a bastard duke on board or something of that)
that he was on a false footing with his shipmates. Not that their attitude was
at all what might have been expected! Many of them at first seemed kind to him,
but it turned out their motives were not entirely altruistic. They suspected,
rightly, that he had influence at the office. Some had sexual motives, of
obscure origin. Many on the other hand seemed unbelievably spiteful and
malignant, though in a petty way never before associated with the sea, and
never since with the proletariat. They read his diary behind his back. They
stole his money. They even stole his dungarees and made him buy them back
again, on credit, since they had already virtually deprived themselves of his
purchasing power. They hid chipping hammers in his bunk and in his sea-bag.
Then, all at once, when he was cleaning out, say, the petty officer's bathroom,
some very young seaman might grow mysteriously obsequious and say something
like: "Do you realize, mate, you're working for us, when we should be
working for you?" Hugh, who did not see then he had put his comrades in a
false position too, heard this line of talk with disdain. His persecutions,
such as they were, he took in good part. For one thing, they vaguely compensated
for what was to him one of the most serious deficiencies in his new life.
   
This was, in a complicated sense, its
"softness." Not that it was not a nightmare. It was, but of a very
special kind he was scarcely old enough to appreciate. Nor that his hands were
not worked raw then hard as boards. Or that he did not nearly go crazy with
heat and boredom working under winches in the tropics or putting red lead on
the decks. Nor that it was not all rather worse than fagging at school, or
might have seemed so, had he not carefully been sent to a modern school where
there was no fagging. It was, he did, they were; he raised no mental
objections. What he objected to were little, inconceivable things.
   
For instance, that the forecastle was
not called the fo'c'sle but the "men's quarters," and was not forward
where it should be, but aft, under the poop. Now everyone knows a forecastle
should be forward, and be called the fo'c'sle. But this forecastle was not
called the fo'c'sle because in point of fact it was not a fo'c'sle. The
deckhead of the poop roofed what all too patently were "men's
quarters," as they were styled, separate cabins just like on the Isle of
Man boat, with two bunks in each running along an alleyway broken by the
messroom. But Hugh was not grateful for these hard-won "better"
conditions. To him a fo'c'sle--and where else should the crew of a ship
live?--meant inescapably a single evil-smelling room forward with bunks around
a table, under a swinging kerosene lamp, where men fought, whored, drank, and
murdered. On board the
 
Philoctetes
 
men neither fought, whored, nor murdered. As
for their drinking, Hugh's aunt had said to him at the end, with a truly noble
romantic acceptance: "You know, Hugh, I don't expect you to drink
only
 
coffee
 
going through the Black Sea." She was
right. Hugh did not go near the Black Sea. On board, nevertheless, he drank
mostly coffee: sometimes tea; occasionally water; and, in the tropics,
limejuice. Just like all the others. This tea, too, was the subject of another
matter that bothered him. Every afternoon, on the stroke of six and eight bells
respectively, it was at first Hugh's duty, his mate being sick, to run in from
the galley, first to the bosun's mess and afterwards to the crew, what the
bosun called, with unction, "afternoon tea." With tabnabs. The
tabnabs were delicate and delicious little cakes made by the second cook. Hugh
ate them with scorn. Imagine the Sea Wolf sitting down to afternoon tea at four
o'clock with tabnabs! And this was not the worst. An even more important item
was the food itself. The food on board the
 
Philoctetes, a common British cargo steamer, contrary to a tradition so
strong Hugh had hardly dared contradict it till this moment even in his dreams,
was excellent; compared with that of his public school, where he had lived
under catering conditions no merchant seaman would tolerate for five minutes,
it was a gourmet's fantasy. There were never fewer than five courses for
breakfast in the P.O.'s mess, to which at the outset he. was more strictly
committed; but it proved almost as satisfying in the "men's
quarters." American dry hash, kippers, poached eggs and bacon, porridge,
steaks, rolls, all at one meal, even on one plate; Hugh never remembered having
seen so much food in his life. All the more surprising then was it for him to
discover it his duty each day to heave vast quantities of this miraculous food
over the side. This chow the crew hadn't eaten went into the Indian Ocean, into
any ocean, rather, as the saying is, than "let it go back to the
office." Hugh was not grateful for these hard-won better conditions
either. Nor, mysteriously, seemed anyone else to be. For the wretchedness of
the food was the great topic of conversation. "Never mind, chaps, soon
we'll be home where a fellow can have some tiddley chow he can eat, instead of
all this bloody kind of stuff, bits of paint, I don't know what it is at
all." And Hugh, a loyal soul at bottom, grumbled with the rest. He found
his spiritual level with the stewards, however...
   
Yet he felt trapped. The more
completely for the realization that in no essential sense had he escaped from
his past life. It was all here, though in another form: the same conflicts,
faces, same people, he could imagine, as at school, the same spurious popularity
with his guitar, the same kind of unpopularity because he made friends with the
stewards, or worse, with the Chinese firemen. Even the ship looked like a
fantastic mobile football field. Anti-Semitism, it is true, he had left behind,
for Jews on the whole had more sense than to go to sea. But if he had expected
to leave British snobbery astern with his public school he was sadly mistaken.
In fact, the degree of snobbery prevailing on the
 
Philoctetes
 
was fantastic, of a kind Hugh had never imagined possible. The chief
cook regarded the tireless second cook as a creature of completely inferior
station. The bosun despised the carpenter and would not speak to him for three
months, though they messed in the same small room, because he was a tradesman,
while the carpenter despised the bosun since he, Chips, was the senior petty
officer. The chief steward, who affected striped shirts off duty, was clearly
contemptuous of the cheerful second, who, refusing to take his calling
seriously, was content with a singlet and a sweat-rag. When the youngest
apprentice went ashore for a swim with a towel round his neck he was solemnly
rebuked by a quartermaster wearing a tie without a collar for being a disgrace
to the ship. And the captain himself nearly turned black in the face each time
he saw Hugh because, intending a compliment, Hugh had described the