DOCTOR AT SEA

He hurried away between the railway waggons and lorries on the quay. It was almost ten. Two sailors, who had somehow managed to drink themselves to a standstill at that hour, staggered up the gangway and collapsed on the deck.

'Take 'em below,' Hornbeam shouted to the Bos'n, with the air of a man handling a familiar situation. 'They'll be logged tomorrow morning. Has Smiley turned up yet?'

'No sign, Mr. Hornbeam.'

'I dunno,' Hornbeam said resignedly. 'If you docked a ship in Hell you'd still get deserters. Get my watch turned-to, Bos'n. I'm going to stations.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Two tugs nuzzled under our bow and stern, their skippers standing impassively at the wheel in their oilskins like waiting taxi-drivers. The pilot came aboard-an alarmingly unnautical figure in a tweed overcoat and bowler hat, carrying an umbrella and a black Gladstone bag. I watched Trail knock on the Captain's door, salute, and announce 'Tugs alongside and pilot aboard, sir.' He stepped aside as Captain Hogg appeared, resplendent in gold braid, and mounted solemnly to the bridge. The gangway came up, the two tugs plucked the ship away from the quay, and the ropes fell into the water with long splashes. The Lotus became suddenly changed into an entity, a being in her own right, instead of a rusty appendage of a dirty Liverpool wharf.

I leant over the rail with Easter, watching the steadily widening gap of water between us and the shore. I had never been on a moving ship before, apart from a brief passage from Margate to Southend in a paddle steamer, and I felt excited and apprehensive. I found the belief that we should now all be transported by the Lotus from Liverpool to the Tropics too outlandish to take seriously.

'Well, we're off,' was all I could think to say.

'Yes, sir. In an hour or so we'll be well out in the River.'

'You know, Easter, to me it seems almost impossible for this little ship to take us all the way to South America.'

'Sometimes, sir,' he answered gloomily, 'I think it's a bloody miracle she moves at all.'

We shook with a gentle ague as the engines picked up speed, slipped down the channel of thick Mersey water, passed the tolling buoys and the Bar light, out into the Irish Sea; in the afternoon a sharp sea-wind blew down the deck and the Welsh mountains were huddling on the horizon. I pranced delightedly round the ship, which was now musical with the wind, looking at everything like a schoolboy in the Science Museum.

I had a letter in my pocket from Wendy, which I purposely kept unopened until we were under way. It was a short prim note, wishing me a good voyage, hoping my headaches were better, and mentioning that I was not to think of ourselves as betrothed any longer. It appeared she had become enamoured of the son of the local draper. I tore the letter up and scattered it over the side: the pieces spread on the sea and were left behind. I laughed. I felt a cad, a devilish cad. But now, surely, I was allowed to be: I was a sailor. A wife in every port for me! I thought. Watch out, my girls, watch out! A rollicking sailor lad, indeed! With a snatch of sea-shanty on my lips I went below for a cup of tea, aware that I was perhaps not quite myself.

***

My elation lasted less than a day. The next morning I was sick.

The Lotus creaked and groaned her way through the water like an old lady in a bargain sale. She climbed to the top of a wave, paused for breath, shook herself, and slid helplessly into the trough of the next. I lay on my bunk and watched the sprightly horizon jumping round the porthole, trying to think about eminently terrestial objects, such as the Albert Hall.

Easter put his head round the door. In his hands he had a cup of tea and a small roseless watering-can, of the type preserved for the conveyance of tepid water in English country hotels.

'Good morning, Doctor,' he said briefly. Will you be in for breakfast?'

I rolled my head on the pillow.

'Not feeling too good, Doctor?'

'I think I am going to die.'

He nodded, gravely assessing the clinical findings.

'Throwing up much?' he asked pleasantly.

'Everything.'

'If I may take the liberty, a good meal is what you want. Plate of fried eggs and bacon and you'll be right as rain. Works like a charm. Hold it a moment, Doctor, I'll fetch a bowl.'

I held the bowl like a mother with a newborn infant.

'Feeling better now you've got all that up?' he asked solicitously.

'A bit.'

A thought struck him.

'Wouldn't like a bit of cold beef and a few pickles, would you? They'd do just as well.'

'No, no, no! I don't want anything. Nothing at all. I just want to be left alone.'

'Very good, Doctor. Just as you say. Perhaps you might feel like a bit of lunch?'

'I doubt it very much.'

He left me in ecstatic solitude. I lay rigidly on the bunk, concentrating on the words stencilled, by order of the Ministry of Transport, immediately above me: CERTIFIED TO ACCOMMODATE 1 SEAMAN. Seaman, indeed! All I wanted to see was a tree.